


Tree at the End of the World (Part 2)

by notaverse



Series: Phoenix Down [16]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Asexual Character, M/M, Other, Past Lives, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 10:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6371935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaverse/pseuds/notaverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unplanned visit to an abandoned city proves to be unexpectedly rewarding. (ALTERNATIVELY: THE ONE WHERE KRIS FINDS HIMSELF, AMONGST OTHER THINGS)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tree at the End of the World (Part 2)

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be the end of the series, but it kind of ran away with me (much like the series itself) and I figured it would be better to split it up again. So no final boss battle yet, sorry. Instead, you get me having some fun with just how well some of the FFVII locations and the MAMA MV go together. 
> 
> Thanks to MC for looking this over for me and being amazingly patient as I sent across tiny chunks of words over far too long a period of time.

Kris fervently hopes that if a "new world" really does open up, as the prophecy suggests, all twelve of them will live in it to start with. Or failing that, that someone will have invented a way to make vid calls between two different worlds, because at this rate, they might all be dead before he's able to have a private conversation with Chanyeol.

It's not like the others don't know why he was looking for the phoenix in the first place. Some of them, anyway. But Chanyeol doesn't, and neither does Sehun, and as long as Chanyeol's materia remains with Sehun, Kris can't summon him alone. He can talk to Sehun - or he can summon Baekhyun and ask him to convey Kris's words to Chanyeol, which means Baekhyun won't be able to resist butting in. All in all, it's less hassle just to speak to Sehun.

But first he has to find him.

They've been in the air since shortly after Baekhyun's unexpected news that there's a Tree of Life in Winhill's cemetery, standing over the bodies of Chanyeol's parents, and apparently fading away more with every passing moment. They'd all argued, over breakfast, about whether or not there was even any point in continuing to search for the tree marked on the map. Should those in Dollet be going to Winhill instead? Should those on the airship be trying to figure out a way to reach their Summons in that other world?

They'd reached the conclusion that if Kyungsoo's interpretation of the prophecy was correct, half a tree was present in each world, which meant that the map was still valid and they should keep flying. The _Highwind_ can't make it to Winhill. But Lu Han, Minseok, Kyungsoo and Zitao can, and after Baekhyun's camera had been passed around, back and forth between the worlds, the Summons had put it to a vote. 

End result: Chanyeol still doesn't get to leave Winhill. Kris feels doubly sorry for him, that he's stuck in his tiny village, and with Baekhyun, of all people. But he'll have more company soon. His luggage is still here, tucked away in the corner of the cabin Kris has claimed as his own, waiting for its owner to take it home again. One bag clearly holds a guitar. Kris remembers snatches of a tune, long fingers careful on the strings, Chanyeol and Baekhyun singing a duet between them. He'd much rather remember a scene like that than the phantom ache of a spike through his chest, a souvenir of last night's dream.

There's only so long Kris can try to wash off the illusory blood in the shower. When he gets out, the first place he searches for Sehun is the bridge, which has become the airship's common room. Joonmyun's there, keeping Jongdae company while he flies, ensuring he's adequately fed and watered. No Sehun, though.

"Feeling better?" Joonmyun asks as Kris approaches. "You seemed rather distraught when you left."

"I think we all were." Kris avoids the question because he can't imagine there ever being a 'better'; no such state exists for people caught between one death and the next. Joonmyun, at least, looks like he's had more sleep than Jongdae, but that's not saying much.

"It wasn't a pleasant night," Joonmyun agrees.

Beside him, Jongdae lets out an incredulous half-laugh. "Anyone ever tell you that you have a gift for understatement? I watched you get your neck broken by-"

Joonmyun hushes him with a hand on his upper arm. "I think I can live without knowing the precise details, thank you."

Kris is grateful he doesn't remember seeing anyone else die. He'd been in the air as a dragon for most of the battle. He'd seen both Baekhyun and Chanyeol wounded - though not mortally - before everything had gone dark, and he'd woken up drenched in sweat, clutching his chest, shaking so hard that his knees knocked together. Yixing had knocked on his door shortly afterwards, hollow-eyed and silent. They'd waited out the hours until dawn together, sitting side by side on Kris's bed, neither of them in the mood to talk.

It hadn't been until they'd all met up for breakfast that they'd discovered everyone else had dreamed of their own deaths too. The grisly task of piecing together the full sequence of events hadn't done much for anyone's appetites. Calling out Baekhyun had, at least, turned their attention away from the torture of describing what they'd seen and felt.

"Just watch out for low-flying...things," Jongdae says. "What if we're destined to die the same way and we have to go through the whole thing again?"

"I got killed trying to help Baekhyun," Kris says, trying to make a joke of it. "I'm never doing that again. Problem solved."

He's used to his jokes falling flat, so he's not too disappointed when he can't even raise a smile from them. It's okay. He doesn't feel like laughing either. It's enough that he doesn't feel like screaming anymore.

"You may not have a choice, if everything we're doing is predetermined." Joonmyun points through the big window at the sky behind them, faintly tinted with red. Up ahead, it's still clear. "Even the path we're taking to do it. We're being driven." 

Kris grimaces. "Like cattle to the slaughter."

"Guys, I didn't get to eat much breakfast, but I'd like to hang onto what I got down, thanks," Jongdae says. "You're not helping."

"I'll leave you in peace," Kris says. "Either of you know where Sehun went?"

Joonmyun looks at Jongdae, who shakes his head. "With Jongin, maybe? Sehun told me they were close friends before."

What better time to resurrect a friendship than the end of the world?

Kris makes his way down to the cabins, pausing before he knocks on Jongin's door in case Lu Han is around and engaging Jongin in...conversation. The only voice he can hear is Jongin's, however, and too low to make out the words. He goes ahead and raps on the door, entering when Jongin calls out an invitation.

Jongin's lying on the bed, curled up on his side, one gloved hand resting against his collar. His gaze flickers briefly over to Kris before returning to the wall. He'd been red-eyed and uncommunicative at breakfast, nodding silently when Yixing asked him if he'd dreamed about dying, unwilling to discuss the details or to offer an opinion on the tree being in Winhill.

"Talking to Lu Han?" Kris asks.

"Yeah." Jongin's voice is a trifle strained, either from the duration of the conversation or the distressing subject matter. "He can't come back yet."

"Was he here earlier?"

"Last night." Jongin blushes, and Kris can guess what Lu Han had come for. "When I woke up from the dream, he was gone. I wish...I wish he'd been able to stay. I tore it apart, the monster that got him, but..." He bites his lip, looking up at Kris. "At least he didn't have to watch me die."

When it comes to unarmed combat, Jongin's one of the best they've got, but Kris can't quite picture him tearing a monster limb from limb in a berserker rage to avenge his lost partner. He's usually more controlled than that.

"I teleported inside it," Jongin answers his unspoken question. "I've never tried it in this life - it's just as disgusting as it sounds - but nothing lasts for long if you do that, and I didn't care. I didn't-" He breaks off, rubbing his hands over his arms, mouth twisting as he looks down at himself. 

Then he's lunging up from the bed, running for the door. Kris gives him his privacy, waiting outside the bathroom until he emerges, more green than tan, right hand bare and water dripping from his face and fringe.

"Want me to find Yixing?"

Jongin shakes his head, water droplets flying from his hair. "I don't think his version of healing extends to taking away nauseating memories." 

He hadn't eaten any breakfast at all. Kris doesn't want to ask how many times Jongin's made this trip since waking up.

"Do you, uh, want someone to stay with you? Until Lu Han can come back?" Lu Han hates being on the airship when it's in flight, but Kris knows he'll deal with it if he has to. For Jongin's sake. He'll be back as soon as he possibly can.

"Not really. I'm just going to...um..." Jongin taps Lu Han's materia, and okay, yes, it'll be less awkward for Jongin to talk to Lu Han through their bond if he doesn't have to worry about having someone else there. Kris gets that. "Call me if anything happens?"

"Will do."

Kris lets him go, checking first to see if he has any idea where Sehun is. He doesn't, but suggests trying the stables, because Sehun had mentioned wanting to see Ace.

The chocobos do have visitors, when Kris reaches the stables, but neither of them happens to be Sehun. Minseok and Yixing are feeding the birds, talking softly as they work. Minseok looks up the second Kris sets foot inside the room; Yixing doesn't notice until Minseok actually greets Kris.

"I didn't realise you were over here," Kris says. "I thought you'd have bigger things on your mind than feeding greens to the chocobos."

"It's kind of peaceful," Minseok says. "Chocobos are nice and simple. Herding a couple of upset friends out of the bookshop and onto a train for Timber is not."

"Only a couple?"

"Zitao wants cuddles and Lu Han's so distracted talking to Jongin that he keeps walking into doors, but Kyungsoo's just glaring with more intensity than usual."

Kris doesn't envy Minseok his task, though Baekhyun's absence probably makes it easier. He gives Ace a fond ruffle behind the wing, receiving a loving headbutt to the chin in return. He doesn't begrudge his chocobo the bruise he can feel forming. Who knows how much time they have left together? 

"Sounds like a fun trip."

"I've had better," Minseok says drily. "We're all settled on the train now, but it'll be hours yet before we reach Timber, let alone Winhill. I'm sure Chanyeol's neighbours will be beside themselves when we arrive. All these strange new people to gawk at."

Yixing finishes wiping the bucket he's holding and sets it back in the stack before reaching for the next one. "I don't think you're so strange."

Minseok grins. "You're not a little old lady who spends all her time drinking gin and playing cards, but thanks."

Yixing looks like he's about to reel off a list of his potential old lady credentials, so Kris gets in quickly before he can finish forming his first word. "Have either of you seen Sehun around anywhere?"

"He said he was going up to the deck," Yixing says. "Something about feeling the wind in his hair?"

"He didn't get enough of that when he was in the plane?" Kris wonders, and Yixing only shrugs and turns back to his buckets.

After one final pat for Ace, Kris heads back up the stairs, all the way up to the deck of the _Highwind_. Sehun's not hard to spot, over by the railings, arms outstretched as if to embrace the air. His shuriken's strapped to his back. The situation being what it is, none of them are straying too far from their weapons, and Kris's sword is, likewise, sheathed within easy reach. Chanyeol's materia taunts him from the centre of the large gold circle, drawing away from him as Sehun turns around.

"I don't have any more answers for you now than I did at breakfast," Sehun says. "Just in case you were here for some."

"Not exactly." 

The answers Kris wants are locked away in the darkest corners of his own mind, and only Chanyeol can unlock them for him. _Maybe._ It's hard not to stare at the shining red materia and think about how ridiculous it is that this one small stone controls Chanyeol's presence in this world. It's so stupid. They'd all shared a world before and now they can't even talk to each other, most of the time. He never thought he'd be envious of the bond Jongin has with Lu Han, but it sure would make it easier to talk to Chanyeol alone.

They don't have time for subtlety, so Kris blurts out: "Can I have Chanyeol's materia?"

To his surprise, Sehun smiles, eyes narrowing to tiny arches. "I was wondering when you'd get around to asking that."

"I was that obvious?" Oops. Kris thought he'd been smoother than that.

"You're always obvious, especially when you're trying not to be." Sehun carefully slides the strap of his giant shuriken over his shoulder, easily avoiding the spikes, and pauses with one hand cupping Chanyeol's materia. "Take good care of him, okay? He doesn't have any other orbs, so you'd better not trip and lose him overboard."

"You really think I'm likely to do that?"

Sehun shrugs. "The old you would've. The new you might not."

Kris wants to ask if he's that different, if any of them are. Sehun would know. Kris wants to know, but he wants to have the knowledge firsthand, to gain access to the memories he knows must exist somewhere. He takes the orb when Sehun works it loose from its setting and hands it over. In a way, he's holding Chanyeol in his hands - an odd thought, given that the two of them are more or less equal in height, and no one of their proportions could condense himself down to anything anywhere near this small.

He presses Chanyeol's materia into the slot opposite Baekhyun in his sword, prompting a knowing look from Sehun. If he goes through with this, he'll need Sehun's Final Attack materia too, but for now all he wants to do is talk. He's not sure how he'd even go about anything else, yet. 

"Thanks," Kris says, and then, realising that he might be putting Sehun at risk in a fight: "You don't have another Summon materia, do you? Do you want-"

Sehun waves away his offer before he can finish. "I'll just steal one from Joonmyun. He's got extras."

"Hope that tactic works out better for you than it did first time around."

"It'll have to," Sehun says, "since you're not leaving me much of a safety net."

"Sorry."

"I wouldn't want to go through that again anyway. I'm not even sure I could, unless maybe there was another life before the last one that none of us know about, and two sets of memories is more than enough for me, thanks. I'm in no rush to acquire more - and you shouldn't be, either." Sehun looks pointedly at Chanyeol's materia.

"I just want to talk to him," Kris says. "In private."

Sehun smirks. "You can try, but don't think you'll be able to keep Baekhyun out of it for long. You never have, either of you."

Kris presses him for more, but Sehun's done talking, ignoring him in favour of watching the ground speed past beneath them. They haven't hit the snowfields yet, so it's mostly green. They're still too far south for Sehun to be keeping an eye out for the Tree of Life. Kris can take a hint. Sometimes.

He returns to his cabin, slightly apprehensive as he sits down on the edge of the bed, sword lying flat beside him, and calls Chanyeol's name. 

Chanyeol's with him in a heartbeat, mouth falling open as he realises that he's in a cabin with no monsters to burn. "Where's...is Sehun here?"

"Sehun's up on deck," Kris says. "I kind of...borrowed your materia for a while." Not that he's planning on giving it back, and he doesn't think Sehun expects him to, but he feels like he should say something anyway. "Is that okay?"

"I guess?" Chanyeol shrugs. "You're all together now anyway, so it doesn't really matter as long as someone can call me out. Are we having a group meeting?"

"No, we're..." Kris sighs and pushes his sword away to make room for Chanyeol. "I just wanted to talk to you. You might want to sit down for this."

Chanyeol does, settling on the opposite side of the bed from Kris, one leg pulled up on the mattress so he can turn to face him. "I don't think there's anything you can say that'll be more of a shock to my system than the past couple of weeks have been, but you're welcome to try." 

"It's what I wanted to ask you about yesterday."

"You figured it out?"

Kris can't say he has, but he has to start somewhere. "Have you remembered anything else about before? You said you were getting flashes of things from the past."

Chanyeol hums thoughtfully, looking down at the bed for a moment before shaking his head. "Nothing useful? Stuff about pranking people with Baekhyun and Jongdae. Did you know Jongin can sleep through _anything_?"

"I've discovered that since we've been travelling together, yeah."

"And I think there was something about cooking with Kyungsoo... Oh!" Chanyeol smacks his hand down on the mattress, eyes lighting up as the memory surfaces. "Your transformations. Baekhyun and I used to help you practise. That came to me this morning."

"Practise? How?" Kris tries to picture it, but all that springs to mind is Baekhyun standing before him, hands on hips, bossily ordering him to transform. The image sends a little shiver down his spine. He hopes that's not how it happened.

"You couldn't control it properly," Chanyeol explains. "It seemed like you changed at random, and then it happened one day when you got mad at Baekhyun."

"It would be him, wouldn't it?"

"That's what he said when I told him about it earlier," Chanyeol says with a grin. "After you nearly stepped on him, I managed to calm you down and you changed back. From then on we worked as a team - he'd wind you up and I'd bring you down, until you were able to shapeshift just by thinking about those feelings. It worked pretty well."

If anyone were going to be able to calm him down, Kris would've assumed it would be Yixing, with his gentle, soothing manner. Or perhaps Joonmyun, kindly but firmly exerting a will of iron. Not Chanyeol, who evokes in him anything but a feeling of calm. It's not even as though Chanyeol's hyper. He's sitting peacefully on the bed, hiding the fire that burns inside - inside both of them, the phoenix and the dragon, and perhaps that's why Kris feels drawn to him. The fire that warms Kris's heart when he looks at Chanyeol was kindled in another life and he wishes he could remember why.

Maybe Chanyeol will have some answers for him. "Baekhyun winds me up simply by existing, but how did you manage to calm me down? You have a secret career as a dragon-tamer?"

"I think you were the only dragon I knew, so probably not. But if I ever meet another one, I'll have to try my technique out on them and see if all dragons like being petted behind the wings or if it's just you," Chanyeol says blithely.

The shivering down Kris's spine turns into an itch between his shoulder blades, which there's no way to scratch surreptitiously. He's not about to ask Chanyeol to do it for him. A change of subject is in order before he starts squirming and blushing like Jongin when he's caught talking to Lu Han through their bond.

But Chanyeol won't let him. "Have you tried it since you found out you could transform? It didn't take me long to learn to control it once Sehun started calling me out - I bet you could do it too." He seems quite earnest about this. "You don't want to only be able to do it when you're about to die, do you?"

"If I'm dying, you can just save me," Kris says without thinking, mentally kicking himself when Chanyeol startles.

"I don't know if I can?" Chanyeol says, visibly embarrassed. "I didn't choose to save Sehun or anything. I mean, I would've if I'd known, but it was the materia doing it, not me. Setting things on fire, I can do. Bringing people back from the dead, I haven't figured out yet."

"But if your materia was paired with Sehun's Final Attack materia, and whoever had you equipped died, you'd bring them back, right?"

"Probably." Chanyeol grabs a handful of the duvet and twists, fingers clenched tight in the fabric. "It's not like I know much about how it works, and it's...weird. Really weird. It's like I reset Sehun, somehow, when I brought him back, and now he's his old self and his new self all in one."

"He remembers. Isn't that a good thing?" This conversation is not going in the direction Kris wants.

"It's confusing for him. I don't know that it's necessarily _better_..."

"Better than not knowing," Kris says with more certainty than he feels. Sehun doesn't appear to be going slowly insane from the additional memories, but who knows what's going on inside his head? Would he say it's worth the risk?

It doesn't matter. Kris doesn't know anything more about Sehun than what he's learned in the past couple of days - and that's the point. Sehun knows about Kris, knows about all of them. How many secrets are buried beneath that mop of brown hair? How long would it take him to untangle past from present, if Kris asked him another question? Wouldn't it be better to possess those answers himself?

"Is it?" Chanyeol stops fidgeting with the duvet. "I thought it might be, and then we all dreamed about how we died. I think I might prefer looking forward to everything I could be in this life. Every time I get a flash of memory now, no matter how nice it is, it's tainted because I know how it all ended. Even if we don't have very long left, I want to live it as myself, not as my own ghost."

"You're too alive to be a ghost."

Chanyeol reaches across, laying a hand on Kris's shoulder with heavy, familiar warmth, and Kris _knows_. "How about you?" Chanyeol asks quietly. "Or is it already too late?"

Touch evokes another memory: the two of them on a couch, sitting by a fire lit by Chanyeol's power, Baekhyun curled sleepily across both their laps and occasionally telling them to shut up when their conversation grows too loud, as if he hadn't been the one talking up a storm earlier. Hip to hip, thigh to thigh, they discuss the worsening state of the world. Kris wonders aloud if they're doing the right thing by staying to fight, if it's worth watching their friends continually risking life and limb when they could be taking them to find somewhere safer - if such a place exists.

Chanyeol hears what he _doesn't_ say, and tells him that even such a powerful dragon can only fly so many people away at a time. That he can't save everyone and that he's better off here, doing what he can alongside the rest of them. No one will let him shoulder the burden alone.

Chanyeol's always been perceptive. Kris looks at him now, thinking that if only they'd found each other sooner in this life, perhaps he wouldn't have been so adamant about keeping himself to himself, resolutely refusing to get too close to anyone. Let someone in, let them become someone you care about, and risk all the pain in the world when you lose them. He'd known that instinctively and avoided it at all costs. Meeting Baekhyun had put the first crack in his wall. Yixing and Jongin had taken care of the next. 

Cracks had come thick and fast after that, and now Kris can admit to himself that no wall remains, not even a single brick. 

"I thought it was too late," he says. "But..."

"I won't do it." Chanyeol shakes his head. "Even if you ask me. I can't. If something goes wrong and I can't bring you back... Don't. Just don't ask me. Please."

He blinks and scrubs at his face with his free hand. It comes away shiny. Kris's throat tightens, guilt keeping the question locked away inside. He can't ask him. He's selfish, but not selfish enough to put Chanyeol through that. It's not the behaviour of a friend, much less...whatever they are to each other. 

"I won't put that on you," Kris says. "I've wanted it for so long I never thought about what it would be like to be on the other side, sorry. I didn't know it would be you." He shrugs free from Chanyeol's grasp, the awkwardness of the situation catching up with him because after all the psyching himself up he's had to do to get to this point, he can't even go through with it, and now he's just embarrassed. "I'll take your orb back to Sehun."

"Don't."

"Huh?"

"Unless he insists," Chanyeol says. "I kind of like the idea that you're carrying me around with you." He looks down at the sword lying between them, where two Summon materia shine in their paired slots. "And Baekhyun."

The smile he gives Kris looks about as embarrassed as Kris feels, like he doesn't understand why he should be feeling this way either. The answers are somewhere in the past that's returning to them in tiny increments, and Kris would give a lot to know what's going on in Chanyeol's head right now. And Baekhyun's, if he's even thinking about it.

"Don't tell Baekhyun," Kris says, not meaning it at all, "but I kind of like that idea too."

Fire flickers in Chanyeol's eyes, joy rising from the ashes of embarrassment in a phoenix flight to the stars. Kris holds his gaze, his own happiness trampling all over the nagging feeling that perhaps he's saying or doing something stupid. 

It's a sweet moment, right up until airship's engines cut out.

Kris clutches at Chanyeol, the two of them clinging to each other for balance as the _Highwind_ plummets towards the ground. It's not a steady drop; the airship tilts and lists at the mercy of the air currents without the engines for propulsion and Kris's sword shifts threateningly on the bed between them. Kris shoves it to the floor before the blade can scrape along their thighs. 

Chanyeol's materia catches the light as the sword slides across the room and it strikes Kris that Chanyeol doesn't have to be here. If they're going to crash, he _shouldn't_ be here. Even if he's a Summon and a phoenix and he can fly and-

"You need to disappear," Kris blurts out. 

"No!" Chanyeol tries to stand, but barely manages to lift himself off the bed before he's tumbling back down, taking Kris with him. "I have to go to the engine room. I'm good at fixing things, I can help Jongdae."

"It's dangerous-"

"It won't kill me!"

Kris's stomach heads for his throat and he has no idea if it's due to the falling airship or Chanyeol's decision to leave the soft, padded mattress for the considerably-less-comfortable-in-a-crash and full-of-moving-parts engine room. "That's not the point!"

"I can't just do nothing!"

"We weren't even that high up! We'll crash before you get there!"

A sudden jolt stops their argument in its tracks and pushes Kris's stomach even further away from home. It takes him a second to reorient himself. Chanyeol looks around in confusion. Without the noise from the engines, it's still quiet enough for Kris to hear his low gasp of surprise.

The engines haven't restarted - but they're no longer falling.

"Sehun," Kris realises, and they both take off for the stairs.

Jongdae's voice over the intercom rings out through the corridors before they make it up to the deck. "Everyone okay? Sit tight; Sehun's going to take us down so I can find out what's going on with the engines."

"I hope the airship holds up better with magic than that little plane did," Kris mutters.

It does, gliding down to the ground in slow, steady silence with nary a creak. It doesn't take long. Kris collects his sword in the meantime. It's wedged itself between Chanyeol's bag and his guitar case, still in the corner of the cabin, and Chanyeol looks torn when Kris asks if he wants to take them back.

"It's like confirming I'm never going anywhere," Chanyeol says glumly.

Kris shrugs. "Leave your stuff there if you want. It's not in the way or anything."

Chanyeol beams at him and Kris feels like somehow he's just done something far more significant than telling someone it's okay to leave their luggage in his cabin. Chanyeol's smile fades, however, when he tries to follow Kris to the bridge and finds exhaustion sapping his strength. It's to be expected, since Kris hasn't had his materia for long, but it's still an unwelcome interruption and it's with great reluctance that Chanyeol disappears.

A year ago, Kris might've been glad to be left to his own devices. Now he just feels lonely. He makes his way up to the bridge, where the others have gathered before the giant window to watch as the _Highwind_ comes to a rest. One final jolt that has them all clutching at the nearest railing, and they're still. Jongin's looking slightly less green; Minseok has evidently disappeared. Sehun's the last to arrive, coming down from the deck with his hair blown in all directions and face reddened from the wind, quite self-satisfied from his landing.

"Is everyone all right?" Joonmyun asks once Sehun joins them at the window.

"Better than the airship," Jongdae says mournfully. He glares over at the pilot's work station, as if he can fix whatever's wrong with his willpower alone. "Thanks for getting us down in one piece, Sehun."

"Good thing I still had a Bird Wing," Sehun says. "I wouldn't count on me being able to get us back up again, though."

"I hope you won't have to," Jongdae says, then takes himself off to the engine room to investigate the situation.

The rest of them are left staring out at their landing site - and quite a sight it is, too. Sehun has brought them down in a valley, grey-green walls looming high overhead on either side, while before them...

"Is that a city?" Jongin whispers.

If it's a city, it's not one Kris knows. He's heard much in his travels, but never of a city set on the far side of a bone-white crossroads, a skeleton of some giant, long-dead creature worn into paths by time and the tramping of feet. He follows the road with his eyes until the green coral of the valley floor deepens into blue and he can just make out the buildings beyond. They, too, look more organic than man-made, all rocks and shells and clusters of coral. This place has been built into the land, much like Cosmo Canyon - but unlike Cosmo Canyon, there's no blazing firelight to welcome them, nor the warming, earthy rust-red of the cliff walls. Here there are cool blues and sea greens, and the chill of bleached-white bone.

"Something like that," Joonmyun says. "I'm not seeing any signs that it's currently inhabited, however."

Kris turns to lean backwards towards the window, checking the skies overhead. "No red tints. Could a storm have been and gone before we got here?"

Sehun disagrees. "It's still behind us. I kept an eye out from the deck."

"Just because we're not likely to run into any dried-up corpses doesn't mean it's a place I want to check out," Kris says.

Yixing, who's been staring fixedly at a single spot since they landed, looks up at him with a secretive smile. "Maybe you don't, but I think we're going to have to. Look at the centre of the crossroads."

Everyone does, until one by one, it dawns on them what they're seeing. From this distance the markings are unclear, but there are twelve of them forming a ring. Yixing's unicorn symbol, closest to the ship, is unmistakable with the long, spiral horn, and when Joonmyun manages to locate some binoculars, they're able to confirm that the intersection does, indeed, bear all of their symbols.

Discussing why this might be occupies them until Jongdae returns to the bridge. One glimpse of his pained smile shuts them all up. 

"I'd ask if you want the good news or the bad news first, but it's all more-or-less the same," he says. "The engines shut down because we were overheating, thanks to the water pump which-" He pauses, glances around at his audience, and truncates his explanation. "The good news is that I can fix the pump, and we've got extra coolant. The bad news is that the coolant needs water to work, and we've lost most of what we had. Until we can get the cooling system up and running properly again, this ship's going nowhere."

"Water?" Kris addresses Joonmyun. "Can you and your ring do anything about that?"

"I can move water around, but I can't create it. If we can find a source of water somewhere I can bring it here."

"That shouldn't be too difficult," Yixing says. "Coral needs water too; judging by the state of this valley, it must have been plentiful. That much water doesn't simply disappear."

"Drained underground?" Joonmyun suggests. "That city would need a water source; perhaps the inhabitants maintained a reservoir below the surface."

After the freedom of the skies, venturing down into the depths of the city holds little appeal, but they don't have time to consider any other options and Kris knows it. "I guess we're going in after all."

\-----

The lure of a good mystery isn't enough to keep Jongdae from conducting his repairs, fortunately, so he remains on the airship with Yixing. Kris is determined to go in the unlikely event that the city will tell them anything of use. Joonmyun _has_ to go, and Sehun insists on joining them in case anything jogs his memory. Jongin still looks like someone who's spent the morning throwing up, but claims that this is just the kind of distraction he needs and no one really wants to argue with him. Besides, unlike the rest of them, he can always teleport himself back to the airship if he has to.

Yixing sees them off, closing the hatch behind them. Kris has mixed feelings about leaving Yixing, of all people, to stand guard while Jongdae's occupied with repairs, but they're boxed in by the valley walls on two sides and not on a continent known for being heavily populated. The _Highwind_ is probably safe for the moment.

The path they take is straight down the centre, leading them towards their symbols. Now that Kris is walking along it, he can tell it's not actually bone, merely overlapping pieces of giant shells laid out in lines. It's only marginally less grotesque than he'd imagined. The shell edges are curved upwards and splintered, not as smooth as they'd first appeared; Kris stumbles twice before he's taken ten steps and counts himself lucky not to have fallen. 

Not that there's far to fall, but the shells aren't flat on the ground, either, being maybe a foot and a half off the surface. The area spanned by the paths is sunken, as if for a shallow lake, though there's not a drop of water to be seen. That's not to say it's empty.

Sehun, walking last in line, crouches down to take a closer look only to straighten up in a hurry, disgust written all over his face. "Fishbones," is all he says, and Kris wonders how long the water must've been gone for the fish to have reached such a state.

He pokes a tiny fishy skeleton with the tip of his sword. It breaks, because his manoeuvre isn't exactly graceful, but it doesn't crumble into dust at the slightest touch. The fish are dead, but this is not the same as Fort Condor, and Junon, and all the other places where the red storm has been, and Kris relaxes a little. There's still time.

"Let them rest in peace," Joonmyun admonishes him. "How would you like it if someone came along and poked you with a sword after you were dead?"

"I wouldn't be aware of it," Kris says. "And if I was, I think I'd have bigger problems than some random guy poking me with a sword."

Sehun, the only one of them to have been recently dead, glares at them both and stalks past on his way to the centre. Jongin teleports and beats him there, leaving Kris and Joonmyun hurrying to catch up. When they do...

It's eerie. Kris has seen their symbols in dreams, on their rings. He's seen them in a book in Nibelheim. He'd had no explanation for their presence then, and he doesn't have one now. The book, at least, had contained a map with the Tree of Life - but what does this place have to do with them or the prophecy? The tree's not here; they're still too far south. Yet here are their twelve symbols, set in a circle of stone.

He traces the lines of his dragon. They're deep - and smooth, far too even to have been made by hand. If they were 'made' at all. Perhaps they've always been here.

"You ever see anything like this before?" he checks with Sehun.

Sehun walks a complete circle around them, brow furrowing as he studies the symbols in silence. "Kind of," he says at last. "There was a...temple? A big, pyramid-shaped temple. One of the rooms inside had twelve pillars, and on each pillar there was a symbol."

"What was the significance of the pillars?"

"I don't...I don't know." Sehun's face darkens with frustration. "I don't remember. But it must have been important in some way. We all went there together before that final battle."

"Perhaps it'll come back to you as we look around," Joonmyun says. "Don't try to force yourself."

It must be maddening to have answers so close, yet so far out of reach. There are no pyramids here - no straight lines at all, really - so whatever Sehun remembers, it's probably not the same place, but it must be significant. Kris just hopes the symbols aren't a sign that all twelve of them need to be here together to accomplish anything, because even if they call out their Summons, they'll still be missing Yixing and Jongdae.

Well, they'll cross that bridge when they come to it. For now, they cross another bridge, which leaves them with multiple choices of destination. Foreboding-looking caves with dark portals leading who knows where, and giant shells in a wide variety of shapes. So many doors.

"Should we split up?" Jongin asks without enthusiasm, speaking up for the first time since leaving the airship. "We'd cover more ground."

He makes a fair point, but Kris has other ideas. "We stick together. This place gives me the creeps."

"Afraid to go in there alone?" Sehun says archly.

"Afraid to let you kids go in there alone," Kris says, gesturing at Sehun and Jongin, and Joonmyun chuckles quietly to himself.

They end up compromising. They're looking for a way down, so Jongin quickly teleports in turn to all the doors he can see and peeks inside, moving along to the next one if there's no immediate indication of the access they want. He saves the middle path for last; the others wait there to hear his findings.

"Houses, pretty much. Full of spirals, but otherwise everything I'd expect...except people. There's no one here."

"Better than finding a city of dead people," Joonmyun says. "Any way down?"

Jongin shakes his head. "Plenty of stairs, but only leading up."

The middle route it is. Away from the houses and open, sprawling paths of the silent city, the atmosphere changes, becoming close and still. The further they walk, the more light they lose, blocked by trees and shells of such peculiar configurations that they form a forest of their own. Branches and spines twine over their heads; the path beneath their feet is strewn with fallen twigs.

Yet in the heart of the forest, a ray of light breaks through, illuminating a shell at least three times as tall as Kris, not even counting its mess of six-foot spines stretching towards the sky. It's the most twisted shell they've seen yet, set on the edge of a dry, shallow pond, with steps leading clearly inside. They couldn't ask for a more obvious sign.

Sehun extends a hand towards the steps. "After you," he says to Kris, and Kris doesn't bother to conceal his amusement when Sehun doesn't duck _quite_ enough to avoid knocking his head on the doorway.

The air inside the shell is noticeably cooler than that outside. Sharper, clearer. Kris inhales deeply, thinking back, for a moment, to his escapade in the snow fields up north and the cold, damp air in which he'd almost frozen to death. There's no snow here, but there is water - somewhere.

Rails run around the curved, dirt-brown inside of the shell, marking out a spiral path down to an opening in the floor. All Kris can see is empty blue below, bordered with green coral. Their way lit by tiny, pale blue lights, they follow the spiral to the end and look down into the gap below.

All four of them immediately back away from the hole to clutch the nearest rail.

"What _is_ that?" Jongin gasps.

"A staircase." Sehun's turned almost as green as Jongin had been earlier. "What does it look like?"

"It looks like a death-trap to me," Joonmyun says. "But a very interesting one."

That's one way of putting it. Bad enough that the hundreds of steps spiralling down through the air are translucent, but they don't even have any handrails. One false step means a long drop. Kris's knees begin to wobble in anticipation.

"If you think it's so interesting then by all means, you lead the way," he offers.

"I thought I'd try moving the water from up here," Joonmyun says, taking his Water Ring from the chain around his neck and sliding it onto his right index finger. "But don't let me stop you from going down to the pillars in the meantime."

"Pillars?" Kris cautiously leans forward, one hand still gripping the rail, and peeks through the hole in the floor. When his gaze finally makes it past all the steps, he sees what Joonmyun means by it being interesting. The stairs lead down to a castle-like landing, complete with small turrets. Below the landing, a massive pool of water stretching beyond the limits of his vision. And set in the water... "I'm seeing pillars down there. Twelve of them." The view is beginning to make his head spin, so he hurriedly straightens up.

"That settles it." Sehun sounds resigned. "I guess we're going down."

"Um...I could teleport down and have a look?" Jongin suggests. "And then back up again. No one has to walk down those stairs."

"There's just one problem with that," Joonmyun says gently. "I only caught a glimpse, so Kris will have to correct me if I'm wrong, but the pillars appear to be mostly underwater."

Kris confirms it. "He's right; thanks for the offer, but you won't be able to get close enough on dry land." He doesn't even try to suggest that Jongin swim out to the pillars, not after yesterday's misadventure.

"I'll get rid of the water first." Joonmyun aims his ring towards the opening. "I should be able to get it to stream straight up and follow me back to the _Highwind_ without interfering in your descent. Stand back, please."

They don't need telling twice. Kris, Sehun and Jongin retreat to the next spiral up, on the side furthest from Joonmyun, and let him go to work. For a while there's nothing from below, and only the strain on Joonmyun's face to indicate that anything's happening at all. 

The ring comes through for them in the end, though. A sudden jet of water shoots up towards the ceiling, and would hit if not for a quick gesture from Joonmyun, tamping it back down until it hovers in the air beside him. No splashes, no drips, not a single precious drop wasted. 

"I'll keep drawing the water until Jongdae tells me to stop," Joonmyun says. "If there's still too much left for you to reach the pillars, Jongin can teleport over and tell me and I'll move it elsewhere. See you back at the airship."

He makes for the door, the stream following behind him like the most obedient of puppies. True enough, the flow does not block the hole in the floor and it's so tidy that the water doesn't even splash the stairs, so they can't use that as an excuse not to start going down.

"You can't take anyone with you when you teleport, right?" Kris checks with Jongin, hoping he's remembering wrong.

"Only inanimate objects," Jongin says.

"You don't _quite_ count," Sehun chimes in, and Kris pointedly turns his back on them to start down the stairs.

The descent is a harrowing experience. Kris forces himself to ignore the steady stream of water and spires of light rising around the edges of the room and focus only on placing his feet carefully on the steps. The staircase is wide enough that two of them could walk side by side, if need be - its only saving grace - but being able to see through the stairs to the dark waters below is a poor aid to balance and the twists and turns don't help. He's half-tempted to forgo all appearance of dignity and shuffle down in a seated position. 

"You're doing well!" Jongin calls up to them from the bottom step, having teleported ahead. "Not much further to go!"

It has to be a lie, but Kris appreciates the encouragement, anyway. Sehun trails behind him, close enough that one of them can steady the other if need arises - or fall with him, if it comes to that but no, Kris is not going to think about such things...

When he finally reaches the foot of the stairs he allows himself to deflate for a moment, closing his eyes as he crumples gratefully to solid ground. Above him, the air feels so open that he might as well be outside. But when he lets himself look up, and up, and up, the true enormity of the cavern sinks in. He can't even see the walls. There's darkness behind the spires of light leading back who knows how far, and the hole at the top of the stairs is barely visible. 

Jongin drops into a crouch beside him. "It's like we've travelled down into the heart of the planet." 

"We're not nearly far enough down for that," Sehun says. "But if anyone happens to see a suggestion box while we're here, I vote we leave a note for the owners about putting in a lift."

Kris's wobbly legs agree with him, and are not looking forward to the return trip.

There's no suggestion box. There is, however, another staircase, which, being made of dark wood, hadn't been visible from above against the darkness of the water below it. At least this one comprises fewer than twenty steps, taking them down from the castle-like upper landing to one much nearer to the floor. If this is just a reservoir, it's by far the fanciest one Kris has ever seen. That ridiculous theatre back at the Gold Saucer could've done with a set like this.

He lies face-down at the edge of the lower landing, straining to see the floor through the surging water, still streaming skyward after Joonmyun. It's impossible to gauge how much more is left to go before the ground is clear. Though the pillars have been exposed further, they're not much use for measuring without knowing their height.

Sehun gives him a hand up. "This looks familiar. Not the cavern, but the pillars. They were in a circle like this."

"And were they hollow, too?"

"Hollow?" Kris scans the nearest pillar, mystified, until he realises what Jongin means. There's light shining through narrow horizontal slits in the sides, and it's not the pale blue emanating from the spires around the cavern. This light is a brilliant white, and it's coming from _inside_ the pillars.

"I don't remember," Sehun says. "It was dark, and we were all there, and I have no idea why."

Jongin bumps him gently with his shoulder. "Maybe you will once we can get down to them."

There's nothing for it but to wait until the water stops moving. They explore the cavern as far as they can without descending. On this level, there's no way to reach the far end, wherever that may be, and they're loath to risk touching the spires of light. It's a beautiful and mysterious dead end.

When the stream of water eventually dies, the floor's still covered in a thin sheet, but it's shallow enough for them to walk through without it pouring over the tops of their boots - or so Kris hopes when he slides his legs gingerly over the edge of the lowest landing. With Sehun and Jongin poised to haul him up if required, he lowers himself down until his feet touch the bottom. It's safe. The others follow, splashing through the remaining water as they approach the nearest of the circle of pillars.

The first one Kris reaches has Chanyeol's phoenix emblem on the side. He reaches for it instinctively, thinking better of it just before his fingertips brush the surface. Somewhere in here is a pillar with his dragon, waiting for him to find it. He should do that and not risk messing around with someone else's, not when he doesn't know their purpose.

"Let's each find our own," he says; the others nod and split up.

He checks another three before he finds it. His dragon, carved in the same strong, clean lines as the symbols outside, illuminated by the light shining from the slits in the pillar. He reaches for it...

And stops, because it begins glowing a shiny, metallic blue at his approach. 

"Does anyone remember if it's supposed to glow?" Jongin calls from across the circle, hand hovering uncertainly in much the same position as Kris's.

"It's okay!" Sehun yells back. "Just touch it!"

Sehun had better not be guessing. They can't wait around forever, though, and Kris slams his palm flat against the dragon before he can talk himself out of it. It's warmer than he expects; heat flares across his skin where it meets the lines, not hot enough to burn but more than sufficient to encourage him to withdraw. Only...

He can't.

He tugs more insistently, first with his arm alone, then stepping back to pull with his entire body. It's useless. His hand is held fast to the pillar, shiny blue lines of the symbol gleaming in between his spread fingers. Is it a trap, as Joonmyun had so casually suggested? Have they come all this way only to lose themselves in this cavern? What if they never get free?

He starts to call across to Jongin, meaning to ask him to try teleporting himself loose, but a sudden concentrated burst of heat sears the centre of his palm and he cries out wordlessly. His own voice rings low and harsh inside his head, and it goes on, and on, and on until he realises that it's no longer coming from his mouth but the pillar before him. Stone grates against stone, a slow rumble without end. Some things were never meant to move. 

Shadows flicker with the sinking slits as an entire panel slides towards the floor. Somewhere behind him, answering flickers in his peripheral vision tell him Sehun and Jongin are sharing the experience. The pillar's wide enough that with the symbol holding him in place, he can't crane his neck around to discover what's being revealed, but when the panel reaches its destination, the heat against his skin fades, and just like that, his hand is no longer stuck.

Kris lets his arm sag before he can be caught up again, and takes a few wary steps to his left to see what's inside. He's looking down at the slab, now sitting in a few inches of water, seeming as dull and ordinary as if it had been there all along. Then he allows himself to raise his eyes to the interior of the pillar, and the blinding white light burns through the curtain concealing his memories.

*****

"Are you sure we're supposed to be here?" Baekhyun complains. "It looks like no one's set foot inside for hundreds of years."

"It's not that bad," Joonmyun says, in that tone that means he's trying to be reassuring but also says he won't forgive you if you dare to contradict him.

Though it pains him to do so, Kris is more inclined to agree with Baekhyun on this. The towering, pyramid-shaped temple is _creepy_. They'd taken one look at the rickety old rope bridge at the entrance and decided there was no way it would survive the twelve of them marching across, even one at a time. Jongin had teleported, and Lu Han and Sehun had teamed up to move the rest of them to the other side with their powers. They'd run quickly through the battered stone archway before it could crumble on them, and more than a few stumbles had occurred on the chipped and vine-covered staircase leading to the entrance, all the way up at the peak.

The trap door in the floor, which they'd had to unlock by using their rings as keys, hadn't helped matters, and now that they're properly inside the temple, they're faced with a bewildering array of staircases, arches and doors.

"The elders told us to come here for a reason," Kris says, one hand reaching out to keep Baekhyun back from the edge of the path. Of course there are no railings. The whole building appears to have been designed with no thought of safety in mind, and Lu Han's already looking green. "I'm pretty sure that reason wasn't so we could all fall to our deaths and never be heard from again."

"Don't mention falling," Lu Han mutters, flattening himself against the nearest wall. Jongin stands protectively in front of him, blocking his view of the sprawling architectural puzzle.

Baekhyun lets Kris tug him back to safer ground. "Things are worse than they've ever been. We're supposed to be out there fighting and instead we're in here searching for some special room we're probably never going to find!"

"Don't say that until you've looked for it." Chanyeol puts one hand to his eyes and scans the room; Kris can practically see him working out the most effective way to maximise their search efforts.

Chanyeol's always been good at applying himself to problems. He demarcates the room into three levels and assigns four of them to each, sending Kris, Minseok, Zitao and Yixing climbing up to the highest, Lu Han, Jongin, Kyungsoo and Jongdae to the lowest, with the rest of them in the middle. Jongin can obviously cover ground much faster than anyone else, but there's no point in him wasting his energy on this when the rest of them are available to help with the search - not when they don't know what to expect from the temple. The elders have never been known for giving straight answers, and hadn't told them anything more than that by coming here, they were securing their future. 

Not securing their _victory_ , which would've been far more reassuring.

Most of the staircases, Kris discovers with no small amount of irritation, lead to nowhere more interesting than other staircases, only ones that run in different directions. He walks through arches that conceal only dead ends; peers through doorways to find nothing but tiny, empty rooms on the other side. He and Zitao almost run smack into each other at one point, both rounding a corner at the same time. It's incredibly frustrating.

After more than half an hour of running around, Sehun shouts triumphantly and waves at them all to come join him on the path he's found. It takes another fifteen minutes for all of them (bar Jongin) to figure out how to reach him. Kris decides to stick with the stairs when one of the vines he tries to climb down tears away from the wall. Unfortunately for him, this doesn't go unnoticed, and Baekhyun and Chanyeol are in the centre of a giggling group by the time Kris reaches them. 

As embarrassed as it leaves him, it's good to hear them laugh. There have been precious few occasions for it of late, with all of them either fighting, recovering from battle, or preparing for the next go around. Sleep's in short supply, and laughter's even scarcer. 

"You've found an exit?" Kris cuts through the giggles.

"There's this path," Sehun begins, and then he looks at Lu Han. "Uh, just keep your eyes straight ahead. Or closed, maybe. Yeah, that's it. Just keep your eyes closed and your hand on Jongin's collar-"

"I'm not a guide dog!" Jongin protests, which doesn't help anyone to stop laughing.

The mirth dies quickly when they start down the passage Sehun's found, their only source of light being small glowing balls conjured by Baekhyun. Kris glances back to check; Lu Han's eyes are open and fixed firmly ahead, his whole face a frozen mask that displays his terror as clearly as if he'd been screaming. Lu Han's strong, and fit, and physically fearless...except where heights are involved. The people who built this temple obviously didn't have that problem, or they might have considered putting in guardrails, or walls, or anything that's not an unbarricaded path, trailing off into darkness, with the floor lying who knows how far below. Kris isn't going to look over the edge to see for himself. 

It's wide enough for two people to walk abreast, if they're careful, but no one does, sticking as close to the middle of the path as they can. It's not like there's anywhere else to go. They pass a small pool of water on the left, which Joonmyun checks out, but it doesn't appear to be anything special and besides, there's not enough room for all of them to gather around it. They're looking for something that's important to all of them, so they've been told.

They find it at the end of the passage, where the light from Baekhyun's magic is overwhelmed by the fires blazing along the edges of the strangest room Kris has ever seen in his life. From the rubble-strewn floor, stretching up towards the high ceiling, murals cover every inch of the walls, depicting wild and fantastic scenes that seem oddly familiar...

"It's us!" Jongdae exclaims.

He's right, though their likenesses are rough and privately, Kris thinks he could've done a much better job. It's easier to identify them by their powers than their faces, and the figures drawn nearest the door are virtually indistinguishable from each other. 

"That one on the end has to be you," Baekhyun says, nudging Kris and pointing to a tall figure on the far left. "Just look at the size of the hands."

"And he looks really exasperated by the guy talking next to him," Kris snipes back, "so that one must be you."

Baekhyun only grins, not disagreeing, and starts to follow the images along the wall.

The room tells them a story. It begins with the meeting of twelve young men, all coming together to live in a cluster of neighbouring houses. Kris recognises the couch where he often naps - it's accurate, right down to the one mismatched cushion - and the guitar that sits in the corner of Yixing's bedroom. He can place the rooms but he can't place the people, not until the images change to depict them practising their powers. A dragon will always stand out more than most.

There's Minseok, freezing the spray of water that Joonmyun sends towards him into crystals of ice that hover in mid-air. There's Jongdae, calling lightning from the sky to destroy the giant rocks Kyungsoo hurls at him. Lu Han levitating a giggling Jongin, who appears to be clutching one of his puppies in his arms. It's easy to tell them all apart now, and at first they look like they're having fun.

All too soon, their fun comes to an end. The Tree of Life towers over them all, tall and majestic, branches spreading in all directions to shelter the twelve of them below. Kris remembers their assignment: to protect it from all sources of harm. Villagers wanting to chop it up for firewood. Bandits seeking to conceal their treasure amongst its roots. Scholars set on taking it to pieces to investigate the source of its power. Strictly human concerns, the way water, earth and room to grow had been the concerns of the gardeners.

No one had been prepared for a wholly unknown threat. The next time the Tree of Life appears in the mural, flecks of red colour the edge of the leaves and the gardeners are looking up in alarm. The time after that, the rust-red leaves begin to fall. They're monsters before they even hit the ground, reaching for the gardeners with fangs and claws, spearing them with deadly stingers or biting them in two. Kris had never seen it with his own eyes. Sehun and Jongin had been on duty that day and Jongin had teleported back immediately to call for the others before returning to help Sehun. By the time they'd all reached the Tree of Life, Sehun and Jongin had been the only humans still standing, blood-spattered and stricken and desperately outnumbered.

"Did they have to immortalise my least-favourite memory in paint?" Jongin complains, walking quickly past it and turning to Lu Han beside him instead.

"You both survived," Lu Han says philosophically. "It could've been worse. Nothing Yixing couldn't heal."

"Except all the pieces of dead bodies lying in the grass," Jongin says, and Lu Han falls silent.

The entire wall after that is a gruesome montage of death, disease and destruction. The red dust spreads to the air; faintly at first, like a puff of warm breath on a cold winter day, and it dissipates within seconds. But before long it's far more persistent. All manner of bird and beast, each monster more ferocious than the last, emerges from the swirling red storm to rampage across the land. People begin to die in droves. If they're not torn to pieces, they're poisoned by contaminated food supplies. The air becomes increasingly dry and hard to breathe. Kris looks at the struggling figures on the mural, villagers clutching their chests as they sink to their knees, and feels an answering tightness in his own.

There's more red on the walls than any other colour now. Even their faces and clothes are dotted with it, showing them in the centre of it all. They try to kill the monsters at the source but even with twelve of them, they're outnumbered, and they can't fight all the time. Too many slip through. Yixing in the mural is torn between healing people and trying to heal the Tree of Life, the additional power he has in his unicorn form being drained to the dregs from overwork.

Kris turns the corner quickly, knocking into Chanyeol, who has come to a halt at the first image on the third wall. One look, and it's easy to see why he's stopped. 

"Recognise the building?" Chanyeol says wryly.

Kris tries to make light of it. "I think they must've painted this when the bridge outside was in better shape."

The figures in the mural are walking over the rope bridge, rather than being lifted across by their magic, but it's otherwise an accurate representation of their morning so far. He follows along as they enter the pyramid, descend through the trap door, and navigate their way through the maze of staircases, arches and tunnels until they reach the mural room.

"Anyone else creeped out by the fact that we're looking up at a picture of ourselves looking up at a picture of ourselves?" Sehun asks, shuddering, when he catches up.

"Not if it means we're in the right place," Minseok says. He's always reassuringly unflappable, which is probably why he's the first of them to tear himself away and move along to the next section. 

Kris does so reluctantly, eyelids half-closed as if by not looking at it fully, he can avoid whatever's shown coming true. He's not _afraid_ of his future, exactly - but he'd rather not know if the rest of the wall is blank.

It's not. It's a room they haven't seen yet, presumably elsewhere in the temple, with twelve pillars arranged in a circle. Each pillar bears one of their symbols. Kris finds his own and tries to figure out what his avatar is doing, up there on the wall. Little Kris is holding out his hand, not simply touching the pillar but taking something out from inside it, maybe? _Or putting something in?_

He studies his hand more closely, then realises what's missing.

"Our rings! We're putting them inside the pillars."

"What for?" Baekhyun asks him, and Kris hates to admit he has no idea.

"But that has to be it, right? Look at our hands. We're wearing our rings in all of the pictures up until now, but not here. That's what we're holding out, those tiny little things."

"They do look sort of like our rings," Yixing says, stepping closer for a better look. "If you really use your imagination. I'm impressed you can tell, but I suppose bad artists can recognise each other's work."

"We wouldn't know," Kyungsoo adds loftily, joining forces with Yixing.

Let them make fun of his artistic talents. Kris doesn't care. Great artists are never truly appreciated in their own time, he knows that. None of them have his sense of style.

"Does that mean we have to give up our rings?" Zitao holds out his hand, splaying his fingers to display the shining silver ring. It's an hourglass, symbolising his control over Time, but he likes to say it's a cute bow. "Because I really like mine."

Joonmyun pats his outstretched hand. "It's better than shutting ourselves away in those pillars, isn't it?"

Zitao doesn't look convinced, and when Kris sees the next set of pictures, he's not sure hiding out in the temple for the rest of his life would be such a bad thing, either.

The twelve figures are back at the Tree of Life, struggling against a continuous onslaught of monsters - though they're usually in teams, rather than all twelve at once, it's a familiar sight. What's not so familiar is the outcome. Each image brings with it a fatal blow, one after the other. Kris follows the trail of gore in silence, the lump in his throat the only thing keeping him from expressing his horror. He hears Lu Han slowing down behind him, trying to comfort a distressed Jongin; Sehun's stopped walking altogether, gaze frozen in place on his own grisly end. One by one they drop out until it's only Kris, Chanyeol and Baekhyun at the far end of the wall.

Turns out they're as linked in death as they are in life. Baekhyun drops to his knees, missing Kris's shoes by inches as he bids farewell to his breakfast. Chanyeol doesn't look far off joining him. Kris shuffles around behind Baekhyun, dragging his eyes away from the sight of an eight-winged skeletal dragon spearing all three of them through the chest in the hopes of putting paid to the phantom pain of a future fate. 

However, it's no easier to watch his friends hurting around him. He crouches down to rest one hand lightly on Baekhyun's shoulder, careful not to restrict his movement when he jerks forward again; Chanyeol drops to the floor next to him, ready for when Baekhyun sighs and leans back against Chanyeol's chest, sweating and shaken. Kris nudges forward to press the three of them together. It's an odd comfort, knowing that when they die, it will be within seconds of each other. They won't have long to mourn. They're not like Jongin and Lu Han, whose partnership is in all things, but they're not simple friends, either, for all that none of them have ever tried to define what they are to each other.

Kris only knows that a life bereft of Baekhyun's light and Chanyeol's fire would be a darker, colder one - a life he has little interest in living. 

"Done?" he murmurs in Baekhyun's ear, and he's close enough to hear when Baekhyun swallows.

"I think so. That was..."

Chanyeol nuzzles Baekhyun's other shoulder with his chin. "Too awful for words."

"Did you see the expressions on our faces?" Baekhyun asks, and almost gags again.

"Don't think about it," Kris says firmly. "Just...don't look at it. We have to keep going."

They can't stay here, with their future drawn out in blood-red paint, and let it prey on them. Everyone's upset but they have to move, and it's Kris's job to get them up and going again. He waits for Baekhyun to take a few small sips from his water bottle then helps him to his feet, mindful of the puddle on the floor. 

There's one more wall to go. Kris can't imagine what it will show. After all, what comes after death?

One enormous picture, it turns out. All their corpses under a dead tree, bloodied and broken, surrounded by the carcasses of the monsters they'd fought. And above...

A phoenix.

A giant bird spreading wings of feathers and flame as it shoots up into the sky. Kris counts the bodies quickly, trying not to flinch at the mangled remains of himself and his friends. There are only eleven. Chanyeol's missing, soaring high overhead, tail streaming out behind him. Kris knows the phoenix as he knows his own dragon, knows it can't possibly be anything else.

The phoenix is a symbol of rebirth: he doesn't know what it will mean for them, for what will follow, but the sight of it punctures his despair with a tiny pinprick of hope.

If they fight, they'll die. That much is obvious. But perhaps death isn't the end.

"I thought I was going to die with you?" Chanyeol says to Kris, looking uncertainly from the phoenix to Kris and back again. "It looks like I'm going last, but that's me, right?"

"It's got to be, but..." Kris shrugs, just as clueless as Chanyeol. "Maybe you survive?"

"Or the phoenix survives. That might not be the same thing."

"Maybe so, but if it's just the phoenix at the end of the world... I don't know, why would the mural stop here? If we're all going to die and that's it, why's there even anything on this wall at all?"

"Do you have to talk about how we're going to die? Kind of makes me not want to keep going," Baekhyun says. "I'm not in any hurry to get myself killed."

Lu Han nudges him out of the way for a closer look. "And you'll do what, hide out here until the Tree of Life dies anyway and takes everything else down with it, including us? How's that a better option?"

Kris tears his eyes away from the mural, seeking out the unexplored doorway just beyond. "I'm not staying in any room with Baekhyun's regurgitated breakfast, and that's final."

"Like the air's going to be any fresher deeper in this stupid temple," Baekhyun grumbles, but he follows Kris's lead anyway.

The door takes them down another dark path; Baekhyun is forced to light the way again, once the torchlight from the mural room is too distant to be of any use. This path, too, is wholly unguarded, so the twelve of them stick close together, walking in one long, tight line down the centre. Kris balances one of the balls of light on his outstretched palm, well-used to the slight tickle from the vibrations. He can't light anything up without setting it on fire, himself, but he's no stranger to Baekhyun's magic, which spans a range from gentle illumination like this to a blinding, sizzling intensity that burns through skin like paper.

No amount of magic seems to be able to brighten the room at the end of the path, the darkness sucking away the light in a slow trickle, so it takes a moment for them to realise where they are. They've seen this room before.

"The circle of pillars..." Chanyeol murmurs from somewhere behind Kris's left ear. "This was in the mural."

Their line dissolves, shadows flickering in all directions as they explore the room. The mural hadn't adequately conveyed the size of the pillars, a stone circle looming over even the tallest of them. Each tower is so wide that it would take at least two of them linking arms to encircle it.

There's nothing else here. No torches, no pictures, no helpful instructions carved into the walls. The only clue they have is their symbols, so Kris searches for his. He scans up and down the columns, straining in the dim light to find any signs of the dragon's familiar shape.

"It's easier if you use your fingers," Yixing advises, demonstrating by sliding his hand down one side of the stone. "That's how I found Jongin's."

Kris glances back over his shoulder, can just make out Jongin standing beside one of the pillars and holding out a light to help Lu Han, who is searching the next one along. None of the others seem to have found theirs yet. He turns back when Yixing grabs the hand not holding the light and starts uncurling his fingers.

"I'm not doing all the work for you," Yixing says. "You can at least search the bits where I can't reach."

There are bits Kris can't reach either, but he hopes the symbols aren't up quite that high. If they are, Kyungsoo's never going to find his.

Yixing finds the symbol first. He tugs Kris's fingers down to the right spot, helps him trace the deep, smooth lines sunk into the stone before moving onto the next. It doesn't take long for Kris to realise that this one is actually Zitao's. The shape is unmistakable. He calls Zitao over and hurries after Yixing.

The next is Sehun's, but the one after that is Kris's, and he runs his light all over it, searching for an opening in which to insert his ring. Bar the lines making up his dragon, however, it's entirely free from cracks and seams. Perhaps that's it, and he needs to slot the ring in his symbol somewhere. He spreads his hand flat across it, trying to feel for a suitable niche. It's...warm. It hadn't been a moment ago. And... _glowing_.

Rich blue light shines between his fingers, brighter than Baekhyun's magic, outlining an almost metallic dragon below. He tries to remove his hand for a better look, but the moment he starts to withdraw, heat flares alarmingly against his skin and that's it, he's stuck. He considers that maybe he's been shot with some sort of hot, sticky glue. Tugging at it does nothing except leave his hand tingling.

A nearby rumble momentarily distracts him from the struggle. Following the sound as best he can with one hand held in place, it's actually easier for him to see what's happening to Sehun's pillar. A section of the side facing into the centre is sliding down towards the floor, the harsh grating of the stone echoing around the room as the others gradually find their symbols. When the noise ceases, so does the symbol's hold over Kris, and his hand slips free with only reddened skin to show for it. He scuttles around to the front, where the panel has left a small opening in the centre of the pillar.

Inside, faint blue light is only just sufficient to reveal a tiny raised mound, with a slight indentation in the middle - like a ring box. Kris knows what he's supposed to do, even if he still has no idea why. He slides the ring off his finger, pricking himself as always on the sharp corner of one of the wings, and sets it carefully in place.

_Click_.

*****

_He's Jiaheng. He's Kevin. He's Yifan. He's Ace. He's a dozen different names in a dozen different towns. He's all of them at once and none of them are him._

_But the latest in his long line of names is 'Kris', and it's as Kris that his friends have come to know him in this life._

_He chooses to be Kris._

It's like waking up from the last dream before morning, when all the fragments of half-finished thoughts and memories stop their confused swirling and coalesce into one shocking, bewildering whole. Kris staggers back from the pillar, clutching his head, eyes closed, reeling at the sudden influx of memories. Is this how Sehun feels all the time? As though he's everyone he's ever been, with all their memories spread out for him to choose from? A guardian of the Tree of Life and a mercenary from Wutai - he's grown up to become both. His brain feels on the verge of bursting, crammed full of the experiences from multiple lives.

Slowly, he cracks open his eyelids, willing himself to focus on the pillar. The light's died down some. It's no longer blinding, the white faded to cool blue, and it's enough to see that where he'd once left his ring, back in that other life, there's now...

_Materia?_

The light makes it hard to gauge the type. It's definitely not red, he can tell that much. No more Summons. He snatches it quickly from its resting place, squinting at it to find the name. The orb is green, he can see that now - that makes it Magic - and shimmering below the surface, he can make out letters of one he's never heard of before: _TRANSFORM_.

Is this what the elders had meant by them securing their future? That by leaving their rings in the temple, they'd exchange them for materia? New materia, with unknown powers? Can this help him save the Tree of Life?

A flicker at the edge of his vision has him glancing back over at the pillar. Its treasure gone, now, the light inside has died completely. There's nothing else here for him.

He turns at the sound of a light splash from behind. Sehun's holding out a materia of his own as he approaches, fingers clawed protectively around the stone.

"Get your memories back?" he asks Kris with a grin.

Kris can't do much more than grunt in assent, words stumbling all over themselves when he tries to arrange them in something resembling a sentence. 

Sehun's grin widens. "Jongin's having the same problem - I can't get a word out of him, but maybe he's trying to tell Lu Han about it. It's a shock, isn't it? Makes it hard to keep your thoughts straight. Try to focus on something you've only experienced in one life, to start with. That might help." He flashes his own new acquisition at Kris as inspiration, and Kris can read _CONTAIN_ beneath the surface of the green materia.

In the past, there had been no materia. Their powers had been innate, not stored in small round gems. Kris has no idea what Contain materia might do, but if it's the trade for Sehun's ring, perhaps Sehun does. 

"Transform," Kris forces out, pleased with himself when the word that emerges is the one for which he was aiming. Short, simple sentences are the way to go. "That's what was in mine. And memories."

"My memories cleared up a little - now I remember what we were doing with our rings - but mostly, I just got this Contain materia."

"I got Exit," Jongin says, picking his way unsteadily across the slippery floor. He's already inserted it in his gauntlet - his first Magic materia, and another unknown. With a name like that, Kris hopes it'll do something like get them out of there without climbing back up all those stairs.

"We should get the others here," Sehun says. "There's probably materia for them in the pillars too. Jongin, can you teleport back and tell them?"

"Oh, and-" Kris starts to say, catching Jongin's attention, and suddenly Jongin's not there anymore.

Or rather, Jongin's probably still in the cavern, and Kris is the one who isn't there anymore.

Yixing barely bats an eyelash when Kris suddenly appears beside him on the deck of the _Highwind_. "When did you learn to teleport?"

Jongdae and Joonmyun, rather more startled, gather around as Kris tries to collect himself. He's pretty sure _he's_ not the one doing the teleporting, given that it's not a skill he's had in any of his lives. But Jongin's never been able to teleport anyone else before, so how is he doing it now...and does he even know that's what he's done?

Jongin materialises a few seconds later, clearly bewildered. "I'm so sorry!"

"You saved me a trip back up the stairs," Kris says, grateful on behalf of his knees. "You don't have to apologise for that."

"But I don't know how... I've never been able to... I mean... It wasn't intentional?"

"Maybe you could teleport other people in your last life?" Joonmyun suggests, and Jongin shakes his head, grinning a little.

"Not even then. I know that for a fact."

Kris figures it's easier to show than tell. "Whatever you did before, think you can do it again? It's the fastest way to get us all back there."

"But I don't even know what I did! I was about to teleport, and then you started talking so I looked over at you, and...ah." Jongin pauses, considering this for a moment. "Normally I just picture myself in the place where I want to go. Only when you spoke up, I got distracted, and instead of picturing myself, I guess I must've pictured you here. That's never worked before, though - believe me, I've tried."

"You didn't have _this_ before." Kris taps his index finger against Jongin's shiny new materia orb.

That catches Joonmyun's attention. He nudges Kris out of the way so he can take a closer look at the Exit materia, eyes shining with gleeful curiosity. He's still a scientist, after all, and once they explain what happened with the pillars, he's eager to return to the cavern - if not looking forward to the prospect of walking down all those stairs.

"Nobody's looking forward to the stairs," Kris says, sourly. "Jongin, you can picture the whole group of us in the cavern as easily as you can picture yourself there. Just give it a try?"

"But what if I-"

"You won't," Kris reassures him, because the last thing he wants is Jongin losing focus and accidentally sending them somewhere else by themselves, with no way of getting back. "You can do this. One at a time, if you have to, but I know you can do this, okay?"

Jongin looks less certain of this, but agrees to try, making the rest of them stand together just in case he somehow manages to forget their faces halfway through. They wait, holding their breath expectantly, until the airship vanishes and they're all in the cavern, surprising Sehun as they appear in the centre of the ring of pillars.

"Next time, send me too," Sehun says, cuffing Jongin playfully on the shoulder, but anyone can see he's relieved to have company again. It's a spooky enough place to be in a group, never mind alone. Jongin's too elated with his success to protest about how he hadn't intended to send Kris anywhere.

Jongdae, Joonmyun and Yixing all find their respective pillars, and the process begins again. They've been warned, but that doesn't keep them from looking alarmed when they find themselves temporarily stuck fast. Reliving their time in the temple had felt like hours passing for Kris. Watching Yixing, he realises that actually, the entire flashback had taken only seconds. Just as well. Who knows how much time they have remaining?

"What did you get?" Jongin asks when it's over and they've all stopped groaning and making pained faces, looming over Jongdae's shoulder to steal a peek at his new materia.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jongdae is the first to find his words after the experience. "It says 'Comet', but I'm not sure how that's supposed to help me. Comets don't exactly hang around down here; they travel through space."

"Just like you were going to," Yixing points out, and Jongdae lapses into a thoughtful silence.

Yixing has 'Fullcure', which sounds promising for the next time one of them gets injured but no one really wants to volunteer to help him test it out. Like the others, he and Jongdae have both received Magic materia.

So has Joonmyun. His pistol only has two materia slots, one on each side of the barrel, so he pops out one of the two Summon materia already equipped to make room for his newly-acquired 'Shield'. "I haven't heard of this one, either," he says. "These all appear to be new - and unless I miss my guess, specifically tailored for us."

"They were our rings, I guess." Kris can see it - sort of - for most of the others, even if the connection's only very faint. He himself transforms into a dragon, Yixing is a healer, Jongin teleports, and Joonmyun has always been the most protective of the team. Even Jongdae has a tenuous link to his new materia - not that he ever made it into space. "But what does 'Contain' mean for Sehun?"

"We should probably wait until we're out of here to find out," Sehun says. "With a name like that, I don't want to risk trapping us in here, even with Jongin's new trick."

"It's not exactly a new trick-" Jongin begins. He breaks off when Lu Han suddenly appears before him.

"I've been getting a lot of mixed messages from inside your head," Lu Han says, frankly. "Which isn't unusual, but if you're all getting something from having put your rings inside, there should be something for the rest of us too, right?"

"Um..." Jongin casts a doubtful look at the Summon materia in his gauntets. "But you can't do anything with materia."

"Then maybe I'll get something else." Lu Han walks as he talks, examining the pillars until he finds the one bearing his mark. "Only one way to find out."

He must've had the story from Jongin because he doesn't hesitate, placing his hand directly against the symbol, not flinching when the stone panel begins to move. Once the pillar is open, he's eager to look inside.

Watching Lu Han get his memories back isn't like watching Yixing and the others. Lu Han's the one staring into the blinding white light, but Jongin's the one falling to his knees, hands coming up to cover his eyes. Yixing rushes over to him but after a moment Jongin waves him away, rising to his feet with only a little less than his usual grace. He grimaces down at the front of his trousers, now wet from the thin sheet of water still on the floor of the cavern.

Lu Han hasn't noticed, still gazing into the pillar and now looking more confused than eager, from what Kris can see.

Sehun crosses over to Jongin. "You okay?"

"There are times," Jongin brushes uselessly at his damp knees, "that I wish I didn't have a link with Lu Han. Not many, and he's normally good about not pushing images into my brain, but I guess this was too much for him to hold back."

"You saw it all again, huh?"

"Just flashes - but _as Lu Han_. It's not fun being in the head of someone who's scared of heights when you're walking around a temple with no safety rails."

Staggering across to them, Lu Han snorts as if to say it's not a memory he really wanted, either. It's a few minutes before he's verbal again. He rubs his fingers over his temples, and then over Jongin's shoulder. "Sorry about that. I couldn't stop it from leaking out."

"Did you get the same thing when I did it?" Jongin asks.

"A few muddled images. Easier to back away and wait until your mind had settled to find out what had happened - only then it didn't. Not completely."

"You probably all have scrambled brains now," Sehun says, snide tone suggesting he's not including himself in their number. "So what was in your pillar?"

"Nothing." Lu Han shakes his head in disgust. "There's a little raised pedestal in there, but there's nothing on it."

They all crowd around his pillar to see for themselves. True enough, it's empty. The cool blue light shines on a block like the one on which they'd placed their rings. But there's no slight indentation in which to slip rings - instead, there are, when Kris looks closely, curved metal prongs curling up from the stone. They look remarkably like-

"Don't you think it looks like a materia slot?" Yixing says. He holds out his hands, cupping his fingers in careful imitation. 

"Yeah, and there's no materia," Lu Han says. "Like I said. Maybe something went wrong with the rebirth process and that's how half of us ended up in the wrong world and unable to touch materia."

Joonmyun disagrees. "I doubt it. The prophecy we've been given in this life suggests that we were all reborn exactly where we should be - half in one world, half in another."

"Okay, but I still can't touch materia. Trust me, I've tried. You've all got new materia and I don't have any."

"Uh...you kind of do." Jongin's speaking so softly Kris can barely hear him. He holds out his left gauntlet, where Lu Han's materia resides. "This one. That's yours."

"So what if that's it?" Jongdae suggests. "There has to be a reason Lu Han can open his pillar. Instead of taking materia out, maybe he has to put his materia _in_?"

Jongin clutches his gauntlet protectively. "But if I take it out..."

"...I disappear," Lu Han finishes for him. "Try it anyway. If nothing happens, just re-equip me and I'll be right back in here." He gives Jongin's fringe an affectionate ruffle.

Jongin brushes the hair away from his eyes, trying to straighten out the mess Lu Han's made of it. He seems less than convinced. Although Kris feels he should say something encouraging, he can't bring himself to do it. No one else makes a move, either. This is between Jongin and Lu Han, and no one else has the right to weigh in. 

Lu Han's self-assured grin loses its steadiness the longer Jongin remains silent. A telepathic conversation or a simple staring contest? No way to tell, but ultimately, Lu Han wins when Jongin suddenly wrenches his materia free from its setting.

In an instant, Lu Han vanishes. 

Sighing, Jongin places the gleaming red orb inside the pillar and snatches his hand back immediately. A burst of bright white light from within the cavity forces Kris to avert his eyes, and when he turns back, the materia has gone...

...But Lu Han has returned.

Jongin tries to pull him into a hug like it's been years, not seconds, since they last saw each other. Lu Han doesn't respond. He holds himself stiff and still, eyes locked on some point in the distance; Jongin withdraws to arm's length and tries to get his attention another way. "Lu Han?"

Still nothing.

Jongin makes another attempt. "Lu Han? Can you hear me?"

Lu Han's eyes slowly narrow in on Jongin. "Only you. I can only hear you!"

The rest of the group respond to Lu Han's panicked statement by all speaking at once until Kris barks at them to pipe down. "What do you mean, you can only hear Jongin?" he asks. "Can you hear me now?"

"Of course I can hear you," Lu Han snaps, voice pitched higher than usual. "You're right here. What I'm not hearing is the noise from the train, or Zitao talking about Timber, or anything that's anywhere but here. Because I'm not anywhere but here!"

That sets them all to talking again, but this time it's Jongin's words that cut through the noise. "You're really here?" 

"And nowhere else. I can't feel anything, Jongin. I'm trying and there's nothing. It's like it was back before I started being summoned, when I didn't have any other bodies to worry about. Only instead of being in my own world, I'm here."

"You're really here!" Jongin exclaims again, excited and nervous and happily tearful all at once.

Lu Han gets it then, still pale and visibly tense, but unwinding enough to enfold Jongin in his arms and murmur: "I'm really here. It's okay. I'm really here."

Kris catches Joonmyun's eye and jerks his head silently towards the opposite side of the stone circle. Joonmyun nods, taking Kris's hint to give Lu Han and Jongin a modicum of privacy. The others trail behind them. Kris stops when he's gone far enough to have a discreet word in low tones while still keeping the reunited pair in sight.

Joonmyun regards them with an indulgent smile. "That could've turned out far worse."

"For Jongin, yes," Yixing says. "I'm not sure it could've been much worse for Lu Han. In the space of five minutes he's had all his memories handed back to him and then been ripped away from the world he grew up in - and, from the sound of things, anywhere else he's been over here. I don't pretend to understand what it's like to be able to exist with multiple bodies, but to suddenly be cut down to one, and to have that one end up somewhere he wasn't expecting, can't be easy to deal with."

Yixing's compassion is a large part of what makes him such an effective healer. He's also right, but this isn't a problem he can resolve. Time will, maybe, though that's in short supply. 

"Jongin ought to realise that soon enough," Sehun says in defence of his best friend. "Especially if they're still bonded, and I see no reason why they shouldn't be. He just needs to get past his own feelings about Lu Han finally being here for good."

"And if he's here," Kris says, "then we've got three very confused Summons on a train to Timber who likely have no idea what's happening."

Jongdae taps the end of his lance on the ground. "I'll call Zitao out. Yixing?"

"I have Minseok." 

"And I've got Baekhyun and Chanyeol," Kris says. "Might as well get everyone at once. Does anyone other than Jongin have Kyungsoo?"

Joonmyun's the only unknown quantity here, and he's of no help. "I'm afraid Jongin has my only Kyungsoo materia. I have multiple Zitao, Minseok and Baekhyun, however."

Sehun volunteers to go steal Kyungsoo away; Kris is amused to see both Lu Han and Jongin catch him in the act, not too wrapped up in each other to grab an arm each. He does come away with the prize in the end, though only because Jongin deliberately hands it over.

"Losing your touch?" Joonmyun enquires politely, to which Sehun gives him a dirty look. 

"It's hard to be stealthy when it's impossible to walk in here without making a splash."

Sehun has a point. Equipping Kyungsoo, he wastes no time in calling him out, and the others follow suit. Minseok appears uncharacteristically flustered when he materialises - up until he spots Lu Han. Before he can head over there, Yixing takes him aside to warn him off.

Chanyeol and Baekhyun, who haven't just watched Lu Han vanish from a train carriage and have less knowledge than anyone else in the cavern about what's happening, immediately turn to Kris for an explanation. He does his best to provide one, conscious of the others listening in. Their reactions are mixed. 

"So we won't be able to go back?" Minseok checks when Kris is finished, exchanging a troubled glance with Kyungsoo. "My family? The bookshop-"

"Forget the bookshop," Baekhyun says, bouncing up and down on his toes. "We don't have to go back!"

Kyungsoo presses down on Baekhyun's shoulder to keep him in place. "Spoken like a man with no responsibilities."

Baekhyun wriggles himself free, ducking behind Zitao for cover and peeking out to retort: "We've got bigger responsibilities than selling books - like saving the world! If the world doesn't end, let's worry about it then, all right?"

Zitao's more worried about their abilities than getting out of work. "What about our powers? If we can't be summoned anymore, do we just turn into normal people?"

"I don't know if you'll keep your powers," Joonmyun says, "but if you don't, perhaps you'll be able to equip materia yourself?"

Sehun produces Joonmyun's pistol from out of thin air, seemingly having swiped it without anyone noticing, and holds the materia under Zitao's nose. "See the nice shiny gemstones you could be equipping? I bet we could find you some stylish nunchaku..." He takes Zitao off to find his pillar, pacifying him with suggestions for fashionably accessorised weapons.

Minseok has people back home to miss, Kris knows. Lu Han's estranged from his family, Baekhyun's not on brilliant terms with his, and Kris has no idea about Kyungsoo and Zitao.

Chanyeol's said nothing. He's staring at Kri- no, not at Kris. At Kris's sword; or to be more precise, at his own materia in Kris's sword. Kris wishes he could hand it to him, just pass it over, because really, it belongs to Chanyeol if it belongs to anyone, whether he can hold it or not.

"You should find your pillar," he says to fill the silence. This is so awkward. "Hey, I guess it's a good thing your luggage is still in my cabin, right? At least you'll have something to wear tomorrow."

It's a poor attempt at a joke; Chanyeol's answering smile is poorer still. Maybe he doesn't _want_ to move across? Kris can't tell. Winhill doesn't sound like much of a place to live but it's all Chanyeol knows, so maybe that's why he's not sharing Baekhyun's enthusiasm. Moving to Dollet is a far cry from moving to another world entirely. Chanyeol's seen so little of this world, and most of what he's seen has been death.

But there's life here too. They're not ready to die yet, and they're going to need Chanyeol if they're to have any hope of avoiding that fate.

"It'll all come back to you soon." Kris pitches his voice to carry to Chanyeol's ears alone. "You probably don't remember how brave you are, but I do. The first time I transformed into a dragon, I was too scared to try flying. I was sure I'd fall and crush someone, or crash into the treetops. 

"But the first time you transformed, you shot straight up in the air without hesitating at all."

"I probably couldn't help it," Chanyeol says. "It's kind of a reflex. Thanks anyway, though."

"Yeah, whatever." Kris unsheathes his sword, holding it up so Chanyeol's materia is between them. "Are we going to do this or what?"

"And if we do? What happens to us?"

"Us?" Kris can't tell which 'us' Chanyeol means. "You and me?"

"All of us with no homes to return to anymore."

"I'm not sure any of us have homes to return to these days." Wutai might not have succumbed, yet, but Kris hasn't called it home for years. Midgar had felt more like a home; at least, once he'd met Jongin and Yixing. "I think the _Highwind_ is as close as we're going to get, and that's got room for all of us." (He hopes, at least. He hasn't checked on the exact number of cabins. Lu Han and Jongin can probably share, though.)

"Home, for as long as we've got left," Chanyeol agrees, and with that, they go in search of his pillar.

Once Chanyeol's managed to open it and had his memories returned, Kris cuts off his scrambled attempts at speech by immediately removing the materia from his sword. Chanyeol vanishes mid-sentence. It takes Kris a few tries to set the materia in place - his view of the metal prongs inside the pillar is blocked by his fingers so he initially misjudges the angles, allowing the orb to roll away. He knows when he gets it right; the burst of white light is a dead giveaway. 

He opens his eyes again to find Chanyeol before him, running his hands up and down his own arms as if trying to reassure himself that he's physically there. 

"Okay?" Kris asks.

Chanyeol glances up at him, shrugs, and goes back to examining himself without a word. Kris leaves him to it and goes to see if Baekhyun's opened his pillar yet. Baekhyun's nowhere to be found, but Joonmyun's there, setting his materia inside the pillar. Kris hurriedly turns his head, having learned his lesson about looking directly at the light. Of course Joonmyun has his own Baekhyun materia. It doesn't have to be Kris who brings him through like this - although it does gnaw at him, just a little, that someone else is responsible. 

When he turns back, Baekhyun's already there, grinning at him, far less nonplussed than Chanyeol. But then, Baekhyun's been irrepressible for as long as Kris has known him. 

"Isn't this amazing? All of us in the same world again, for good? Or," Baekhyun amends, turning down the optimism a little, "for as long as we hold out. Hey, I wonder if I can touch my materia now I'm here? Let me have your sword."

He's reaching for it before Kris even moves, so Kris lets him try to take it, assuming he'll fall short as usual since Summons can't move items with equipped materia.

At least, they couldn't _before_.

Baekhyun looks almost as surprised as Kris feels, struggling with the weight of the massive broadsword. He quickly brings his other hand up for balance, grasping it more firmly around the hilt - albeit still in a way that suggests he's more likely to slash himself across the knees than inflict harm on anyone else. "And you carry this thing around all day? Willingly?"

"What do you want me to do, arm-wrestle monsters to dea-" Kris stops short when he spies the empty slot where Baekhyun's materia used to be. He glances down at the floor, wondering if it's fallen out, but he doesn't recall hearing a splash and it had definitely been there when he'd removed Chanyeol's materia.

"Lost something?" Joonmyun asks.

"I don't know. Maybe." Kris takes his sword back before Baekhyun can drop it on anyone's toes. "You said you had multiple Baekhyun materia, right? Do you still have them?"

Joonmyun pulls out a blue drawstring bag from beneath his jacket, frowning as he holds it up. It's suspiciously flat. He opens it anyway, turning it inside out to make doubly sure.

The bag is empty.

"Does _anyone_ have any Summon materia left?" Kris asks, receiving a chorus of negative responses in reply.

"Of course they've all disappeared." Lu Han seems calmer now, no longer panicked, though his voice is still rough when he says: "If we're all here now, who are you going to call?"

He has a point. While Kris has been occupying himself with Chanyeol and Baekhyun, Minseok, Zitao and Kyungsoo have all made use of their pillars. The twelve of them are together, in the same place, with all their memories and with no time limits attached - other than the impending end of the world, but surely they can have at least a few minutes to enjoy the novelty.

"We've probably just wiped out all the Summon materia in the world," Joonmyun says. 

Kyungsoo is quietly delighted by this. "And not a moment too soon."

"But what now?" Zitao asks. "We're here. What are we supposed to do?"

"Good question." Kris turns to Jongin, who has yet to relinquish his grip on Lu Han. "Think you can use your new materia to take us back to the airship so we can go find out what the rest of us can do?"

"Uh...maybe if you all stand together? There's a lot of you."

Eleven people all trying to stand in the same space results in a number of trampled toes, until Baekhyun decides to pose them as if Jongin were about to take a group photo. Kris tries to argue that no, he doesn't have to stand at the back just because he's tall, but Baekhyun ushers him into position next to Chanyeol anyway and he figures there are more worthwhile things to argue about. He rolls his eyes when Baekhyun tells them all to smile. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he can see he's not the only one who listens.

Any and all smiles vanish the instant they return to the _Highwind_.

Jongin's teleported them all to the deck in one large group, which puts them down right in the middle of a swarm of short, spiky green creatures with vicious claws and sharp teeth. _Boundfats_ , Kris thinks to himself, just as a pair of them crash into his legs. He yelps at the unwelcome sensation of nails being driven into his calves and backs away as fast as he can, colliding with Kyungsoo, for whom the danger is somewhat closer to vulnerable parts.

"We weren't even gone that long!" Joonmyun yells, struggling for breathing space. "Were we?"

"Long enough!" Minseok shouts back at him. 

Shouting's the only way to make themselves heard over the din of monsters crashing around on deck. The Boundfats aren't the only invaders. There's something slender and serpentine with wings, hovering over by the stairs, and Kris catches a glimpse of something else, a fat smear of blue and red closer to the ground. Everywhere, snapping teeth and the crack of bone against metal and wood, and he can't tell whose. There's not enough space for him to draw his sword, much less use it, unless he wants to risk breaking open his friends' skulls with the hilt.

He tries to push his way clear of the crowd. Zitao has the right idea, kicking out with his sturdy boots to catch the Boundfats under their chins. They topple into each other like fat green dominoes, knocking down the three in front of Kris, so he seizes the opportunity to draw his sword while it's safe for him to turn around. One good stab in the belly's enough to take out a Boundfat that leaps over its fallen comrades to claw at him. The greenish white flesh explodes in a burst of purple blood, slicking the wooden deck.

"My airship!" Jongdae wails.

"Worry about the clean-up later!" Kris stabs at another one, making room for Yixing to sweep a couple away with his staff. It's a less messy way of clearing a path, but also less permanent. They have to get these monsters off the ship. "Where did they all come from!"

"They're jumping down from above!" Jongin calls in response. He's separated from the rest of them, trying to catch one of the winged creatures as it taunts him from overhead. "Look up!"

Kris risks a quick glance upwards, just in time to see another Boundfat hurtling towards the airship. They're throwing themselves down from a cave set into the walls of the cliff, seemingly not bothered by the prospect of landing on their fellows. Jongdae blasts it with his Bolt materia; its scorched body falls prone to the deck and the stench of burned meat adds itself to the already unpleasant atmosphere.

Lightning flashes again. Kris hears gunshots from behind - Joonmyun at work - and sees the flying serpent collapse to the deck. Jongin teleports just in time to avoid a collision, reappearing next to Lu Han. 

Lu Han is...not fighting. Not doing anything, really, other than looking around furiously, hands held out in front of him and cupped together. He's not the only one. Zitao's fighting hand to hand - or rather, foot to chin - but the rest of the former Summons are still clustered together, occasionally lashing out when a monster makes it past the combined efforts of Yixing and Sehun. This could be a problem, and it's not one Kris has time to spend thinking about.

"I need to get to the bridge!" Jongdae stabs at one of the flat creatures, eventually frying it with lightning when he can't manage to catch its long blue neck with his lance. "Jongin, can you send me there? If I can get us up in the air, at least nothing else can come aboard."

"Yeah, but what if there are monsters on the bridge too?" Jongin points out. "You can't go alone!"

"I'll go," Yixing volunteers. 

Unexpectedly, Kyungsoo makes the same offer. He's picked up a piece of broken railing, and is using it to smack Boundfats in the face. The sparkle of dark glee in his eyes suggests he's going to make the most of the opportunity to do some damage.

"Good luck," Kris says. "We'll try to clear things up here."

"We could do without the extra weight," Jongdae says. "See if you can get them to throw themselves overboard?"

"That's easy." Baekhyun's voice shakes but there's no suppressing his cheek when he says: "Kris can just rap a few lines; that ought to do it."

Jongdae grins at him and vanishes, Yixing and Kyungsoo in tow.

Kris wishes he had time to glare at Baekhyun. "Any chance you can send the monsters somewhere else too?" he asks Jongin.

Jongin has to catch his breath before answering, already breathing hard, but it doesn't keep him from slamming his fist into another one of the pesky flying serpents. "Not when they keep moving!"

"Unless you've got some Dazers on you, they're not going to stop until they're dead!" It's the first thing Lu Han's said since their return to the _Highwind_. He's still holding his hands before him, though not using them to attack.

"I need to send you somewhere safe," Jongin says.

"Don't!" 

"But-" Jongin protests, sounding hurt by the harshness in Lu Han's voice.

"There's nowhere safe," Lu Han cuts him off, tone gentler now. "Sending me away won't protect me from what's coming. You know that." He turns to kick out at a Boundfat approaching him from his open side, almost overbalancing in the process, but the monster goes sailing over the railing anyway.

"Goal!" Minseok cheers distantly from behind Joonmyun. Chanyeol's with him, picking up anything that Jongin's knocked out and throwing it over the side while Joonmyun continues to fire away with his pistol.

"This isn't a game of football! And you don't have your armour or your sword!"

"My old sword's in my cabin," Kris says. "If you can get to it, Lu Han can use that."

Lu Han shakes his head. "I doubt it. I never had the skill to use my sword - it was all the sword's doing. If I can just..." A slow smile spreads across his face as sky blue light begins to peek through the fingers of his cupped hands. "Got it. Finally."

Kris and Jongin both jump back to avoid the path of the gleaming scimitar as it bursts out from Lu Han's hands. It looks the same as before, Kris thinks, but he doesn't have time to study it. Whether Lu Han has the same level of skill or not, that's another one of them armed, and that can only be a good thing. The monsters are still dropping down from the cave and there's no sound from the engines yet. He hopes nothing critical has been damaged.

"Try invoking your power!" Lu Han calls across to Minseok. "Just watch your aim!"

"What do you think I've been doing?" comes the unimpressed response. "Admiring my hands?"

Jongin gives up on the idea of sending Lu Han away when Lu Han lops off the heads of three Boundfats in as many seconds, proving that he retains his supernatural sword skills. Kris hasn't been without a blade since he was fourteen and he's had no shortage of practice with one, yet he knows he'd never be able to beat Lu Han in a sword fight. Not with a magic sword. They fight back to back, clearing a circle around them, while Jongin teleports out of range, taking Baekhyun with him and depositing him by the stairs.

Teleporting's probably safer than walking, when the deck's slippery with blood and gore. Kris has to take small, careful steps to keep his footing in the disgusting slop. He tries to avoid looking down.

Over by the stairs, Baekhyun's doing the exact opposite, his mouth twisting into a grimace as he takes in the stomach-churning mess. Kris starts to turn away, not wanting to watch if he's going to be sick.

But the only thing that emerges from Baekhyun's body is blinding white light. _Judgement_. The monsters nearest the stairs shrink into themselves, withering away under the force of Baekhyun's disgust. Spines retreat into pale green hides; bulbous bellies deflate with a rush of air. His whoop of triumph rings out across the deck, clear above the noise. 

It's a relief to Kris to know that Baekhyun's not defenceless. One less thing for him to worry about as he works to clear the deck of enemies.

He's not the only one spurred on by Baekhyun's success. Zitao stops fighting, drawing back behind Sehun to concentrate on his hands. Boundfats, now down one adversary, swarm them immediately. 

"Some help over here?" Sehun yells.

"Coming!" Kris calls back, but he can't, hemmed in as much by corpses as by the living. Even he's not tall enough to step over them all. "Jongin, can you-"

Before he can finish his request, a thin purple sheet springs up between Zitao and the monsters surrounding him. Stuck on the outside, Sehun tries to slash at it with the sharp golden spikes of his giant shuriken, but the sheet only bends, rippling outwards where the weapon makes contact. It doesn't break.

"Don't touch it!" Joonmyun's wearing his ring on one outstretched hand and holding his gun in the other, no longer firing. He's moved away from Minseok and Chanyeol, heading towards Zitao. "I don't know how it'll react to living creatures!"

Kris lunges forward to strike down a Boundfat making for Joonmyun, who gives him a grateful smile. "What is that thing?"

"A shield, I think. That is, if my new materia is doing what I hope it does."

"A shield made from what?"

"Do you notice how much less blood is on the deck now? Would you like to take a guess at how much of a Boundfat's blood is made up of water?"

Kris isn't interested in guessing, but anything that makes the deck less slippery is fine by him. He can't see how a shield made of _water_ is going to protect Zitao long enough for him to call up his power, though. "Less guessing, more shooting," he says, and Joonmyun reluctantly turns away from the shield to resume his attack.

They all whip their heads around at Zitao's cry of alarm - just in time to see the remains of a Boundfat slide down the shield. There's something odd about the corpse; Kris isn't close enough to determine what's wrong. The important thing is that it _is_ a corpse, and that means Zitao's got some breathing space to concentrate on his abilities. Assuming he doesn't get distracted by monsters trying to break their way through to him, anyway.

Sehun's trying to put some distance between himself and the strange shield. "Yeah, definitely don't touch it! I think you're taking the water from their bodies too! That one just dried up!"

"Not what I thought would happen, but I'll take it," Joonmyun says, and Kris resolves to go nowhere near anything that seems to have the drying properties of the red force.

Jongin appears next to him, breathing hard, smears of blood decorating his shirt. "I've just come from the bridge. Everything's a mess. Jongdae's going to go down and check on the engines to make sure they haven't broken anything vital." He pauses to make a group of prone Boundfats disappear, then notices the purple wall up around Zitao. "Do I need to get Zitao out of there?"

"Don't go anywhere near it," Lu Han advises. "He's safer in there, trust me."

Zitao's not the next one to use his powers, though. That would be Minseok, who turns the monsters nearest him into ice sculptures and unfortunately freezes some of the remaining blood on the deck, which doesn't help with keeping their footing. He calls over an apology before turning away so that his next attempt has him facing away from the rest of the group. The air is still freezing; only all the physical exertion of the battle keeps them from feeling the chill.

"How did you get it to work?" Zitao asks Lu Han. "I don't feel anything."

"Maybe it's because of the shield?" Joonmyun ponders, but Lu Han talks over him.

"Pretend it's like the second time! That worked for me!"

"Huh?" Baffled, Kris slashes another Boundfat across the throat, hoping there's a detergent somewhere on the airship that's good at getting out bloodstains. He's acquired so many of them today. "The second time?"

"The second time we were summoned," Lu Han says, impatiently, as he sends one of the small flying serpents crashing to the deck. "The first time it's automatic and we don't know what we're doing. The second time we have to make it work. It's a...a feeling. I can't explain it to you."

The advice works for Zitao, evidently. The deck begins to shake, momentarily halting the battle as friend and foe alike pause, quivering where they stand. Kris remembers the earthquake from the cavern, and how he'd thought Zitao's power might be like Kyungsoo's. But he'd known he was wrong the second he saw...

"Fire!" Kris yells. "Can you make it happen without the fire?"

Between the dampness and the effect of Minseok's Ice magic, he's not sure if the deck would even burn, but if it does, those four pillars of flame are going to be a major problem for them. He berates himself for not remembering sooner. Zitao's powers in the past hadn't involved fire and giant cauldrons, and he's only seen this life's version once.

"I don't know!" Zitao yells back. "It works the same every time!"

"You can do it," Sehun encourages him. "The fire just dresses it up; that's not what you do, remember?"

Kris is moving far too much to be able to hold his breath, but he's doing it mentally, waiting to see if the wood suddenly catches fire. Four flickers of yellow spring into life - two outside the shield, and two behind it. There's too much chaos to hear if they crackle; too much death in the air to smell burning.

But then the first Boundfat to touch the fire screams, and Kris has his answer.

"Shut it down!" he orders, not knowing if it's even possible. He's never seen Summon magic cancelled during execution. Is it still Summon magic if they're no longer Summons? It's just magic, performed without materia or magical items.

Zitao's huddled behind the shield, hugging himself around the middle as though he can draw the power back inside by shrinking down into the tiniest form he can manage. The flames grow no taller, but they don't shrink, either. Kris kicks another Boundfat towards the nearest one, figuring he might as well get some use out of them while they're there.

Joonmyun wends his way through the mess to reach the shield, which he drops with a quick motion of his ring. Sehun immediately steps back in to pick up the protective slack, keeping the monsters away from Zitao's hunched form. Joonmyun slips behind him, dodging the flames to lay one hand on Zitao's back. Zitao bends down further; Kris sees pain twisting his features into a grimace but Joonmyun's presence seems to help, and Zitao leans into him, letting Joonmyun whisper up into his ear.

Whatever Joonmyun's saying does the trick. The four pillars of flame wink out, as though Jongin had teleported them elsewhere. An exhausted Zitao sags against Joonmyun, the fight gone out of him.

"So that's what happens when you try to stop it," Lu Han says. "I've never tried. Don't think I want to, either."

" _You_ don't have to," Kris points out. "But we're going to have to be careful with fire and structural damage while we're on the _Highwind_. So Zitao and Kyungsoo shouldn't use their powers, and neither should Chanyeol."

"Kyungsoo won't, especially not if he's around complicated machinery. But Chanyeol-" Lu Han breaks off, looking around anxiously. "Have you seen Chanyeol?"

"Wasn't he by Minseok?"

But Minseok is now alone, turning his magic away from his friends, and Chanyeol is nowhere in sight.

"Chanyeol!" Kris shouts across the deck. Their adversaries are mostly short, even if the bodies are stacking up. Someone as tall as Chanyeol should not be so hard to spot. Perhaps he's gone down to help Jongdae and the others.

"He hasn't left the deck!" Baekhyun calls over from the stairs. "I'd have seen him!"

"I didn't send him anywhere!" Jongin chips in.

Lu Han sighs. "Go find him. He probably tripped over a body and knocked himself out or something. I can handle things here." He doesn't say anything aloud, but Jongin's beside him in a flash, edging Kris out of the way to take over his position at Lu Han's back.

Having that kind of bond with Chanyeol would be useful right now. Kris plunges into the pack, making for the spot where he'd last seen Chanyeol. He crushes things beneath his boots that he really, really does not want to think about: flesh squishes and tiny bones break, and he's so glad they've refilled the water tank on the airship because he's going to want to take a long, hot shower to wash away the carnage. He figures they all will.

There's a pile of semi-conscious Boundfats lying near the railing where Chanyeol had been throwing them overboard. He must've stopped, which means either he's moved to another part of the deck or he's...

Kris's breath catches in his throat at the sight of frizzy blond hair - frizzy _bloodstained_ blond hair - peeking out from beneath one of the odd flat monsters. Or possibly two flat monsters. It's hard to tell. Whatever it is, it looks like the offspring of a snake and a scorpion, with a long blue neck and giant red claws that meet in the middle of a green, fishy body. There's even what appears to be a second head attached to the claws, with tiny yellow eyes glaring coldly at Kris.

That one has no neck. The one that does lunges for Kris as soon as he's within range, spitting out a dark, foul-smelling liquid in his direction. A glob of it lands next to his boot. It doesn't appear corrosive but he steps over it carefully, alert for any further incoming projectiles, and raises his sword. The serpentine head hisses in response. It whips towards him as he approaches, rearing back when he swings so he never manages to connect. When he tries to get nearer, to chop off the neck closer to the body, the head snaps towards his wrist and he has to withdraw or risk being bitten. 

His eyes dart to the deck. Little of Chanyeol is visible, between the piles of Boundfats and the cover of the snake-scorpion creature. There's so much blood everywhere but is any of it Chanyeol's? There are too many shadows for him to tell purple from red. A creature this flat, he'd normally stab down into the body, but he can't risk his sword reaching Chanyeol. There has to be a better way.

Kris contemplates the pile of Boundfats. Their backs are full of spines, but they seem safe enough from the front while their sharp teeth and claws are out of commission. He reaches for the nearest one, gripping a handful of its protruding belly and giving it an experimental tug upwards. When he's not immediately forced to drop it, he concludes that he can probably hold it one-handed, just not for very long.

He needs his other hand for his sword. He takes the Boundfat from the pile and holds it low, hoping it doesn't regain consciousness while his wrist is so perilously close to its teeth. One tentative step forward. Then another. On the third step, the serpentine head darts towards him with such speed he barely manages to bring the Boundfat up in time. He pushes it at the head so spines meet mouth, raising his sword with his other hand to strike at the neck before it can retreat. It's instinct more than carefully planned timing. The shortened neck crashes to the floor, blood draining from the wound; Kris drops his improvised shield into the puddle and flexes his fingers. 

The scorpion half of the monster does the same.

Claws clack menacingly against the deck. The monster levers itself up, the second head's eyes now full of fire and aimed at Kris. It stays low, unable to gain much height, but the added boost pushes it away from Chanyeol enough for Kris to risk knocking it clear. His sword's still too sharp to take the chance, so near to Chanyeol's body, but there's no shortage of Boundfats. Dropping his sword, he grabs another of the spiky monsters with both hands and swings with all the force he can muster. He catches the snake-scorpion creature just below its second head, pushing up and outwards to knock it over. The spines sink into the scaly green body with a squish, not the smack he'd been hoping for, and he's pulled forwards with the monster as it wobbles. He kicks out to regain his balance against it, tugging the Boundfat free at the same time.

It's stubborn; he'll give it that. It rocks on one set of claws, teetering off-balance yet refusing to fall. He's not sure he can manage a second swing. Arms aching, he throws the Boundfat bodily towards the creature, aiming high to crash into it at just the right point.

The moment the Boundfat leaves his hands, he's sure he's missed. Too high. He's overshot. It barely scrapes the edge. He'd be holding his breath in anticipation if he weren't breathing so hard. The monster rocks, and sways, and-

_Falls_.

Kris snatches the opportunity with both hands. He looks down to see if Chanyeol's now completely clear. He is, in a manner of speaking. No more monsters pinning him down. 

But they've left their mark. Multiple marks, to be precise. Kris can't tell if the holes in the back of Chanyeol's shirt are mirrored in the front, since he's lying face-down, but they're spaced like the spines of a Boundfat, torn cloth bloody around the edges. The culprit's long-gone.

Chanyeol's so still. So broken. Is he even breathing? Did the spines pierce his lungs? Kris tries to force himself to his knees, to brush aside the blood-matted hair and feel for a pulse. He has to check. Has to know. 

But he would know, wouldn't he? If Chanyeol were dead? Wouldn't he feel it? Wouldn't he feel his aching heart cracking in two? Wouldn't the colour drain from his world, until his eyes could see nothing but grey? Wouldn't all sounds of life fade away into lonely, empty silence?

But the pressure in Kris's chest isn't that of his heart tearing itself apart. Rather than splitting, it's coming together, heat and pain and anger and _fire_. Bright green materia flashes in his mind's eye and he screams his acceptance into the sky, letting the magic have its way with him. If these monsters won't leave the airship, then he'll just have to be a bigger monster. Much bigger, with scales their spines can't penetrate and a long, pointed tail that lashes out behind him. It doesn't hurt as much, this time. Not being poisoned helps. This is how it used to be, almost. When he'd learned to control his changes. Learned with the help of Baekhyun and-

Wings burst from his back: black, strong, powerful. Wings can carry him anywhere. Away from this massacre, away from this valley, away from this tainted world. All he has to do is fly.

Yet flying won't take him anywhere he wants to be. He belongs here, on this airship, with these people. _With his friends. His family._ Chanyeol's battered body lies at his clawed feet, still and defenceless. His fire has gone out, and Kris can't unleash his own without endangering the very people he wants to save, but a dragon always has other options.

Especially a dragon half-mad with pain. Kris takes all his rage, all his anguish, all his fury, and lets it explode in a roar that shakes the deck beneath him. Everything stops. No more blades or bullets cleaving flesh; no pounding of fists. Men and monsters alike are stunned. 

Then Baekhyun screams his name and the world restarts.

Kris swipes a claw across the deck, knocking aside anything unlucky enough to be in his path. Monsters scatter in his wake. He's vaguely aware of Minseok running for safety, of sudden gaps appearing in his vision where Jongin must be moving the others out of his reach. He tries to call out to Jongin, to tell him that Chanyeol's here and needs moving too, but all that comes out is another deafening roar.

He turns slowly, carefully, rage held in check by his need to not step on Chanyeol. It's still there, boiling just below the surface. It's taking everything he's got to control his movements when all he wants to do is _destroy_.

With Chanyeol safely before him, Kris braces himself with his weight mostly on his front legs, and flicks his tail rapidly from side to side. He can't see what he hits but he feels every single smack. Something tries to cling on, there's a sudden weight near the tip, but with another roar he shakes it free. Again and again he sweeps across the deck. He keeps lashing out until his tail meets only empty air. And then... 

It's over.

The deck is silent again, save the heavy puffs of a dragon's breaths. Kris turns as far as he can, craning to see the carnage behind him. It's not very far at all; his neck's nowhere near as long as his tail and his own body blocks his view. What he can see is a less pleasant sight than he'd hoped for. He's brushed the bulk of the monsters overboard, true, but not all of them had sailed easily over the railings. Dark, dripping blood stains barriers broken by bodies. The gaps are too small for a dragon to fall through. Humans, on the other hand, will be much more susceptible.

A jolt from below sends shocks up his spine. He turns back around, neck slightly sore, as the airship begins to rise. It's not the smoothest take-off in the world but the rumble of the engines is music to his ears. Right now, he doesn't even care where they go. They just have to get out of here, away from the monsters leaping down to attack them, away from the place where Chanyeol...

Kris can't do anything about it like this. He's too big, too clumsy. Changing back used to be as simple as breathing, he remembers - now that the memories are no longer locked away. Once he'd learned to control the change, he'd been able to do it at will. Only this time it hadn't been a natural transformation. His body doesn't listen to him the way it used to.

Not until he thinks about the materia, green and shiny in the hilt of his sword. Thinks about what it can do for him - what it can do _to_ him. The magic kick-starting what's already there, the power that's been inside him across two lifetimes. There's a warmth in his heart when he lets it in and he shrinks, tail retracting and wings folding in on themselves, until there's nothing left of the dragon but an exhausted man. 

It feels like Kris has been fighting for _days_. His body's much lighter than it was a minute ago but that only means he's less steady on his feet, so wobbly a strong breeze could knock him down. If there was one around, he'd be tempted to let it. At least it would mean he wouldn't be standing up any more. He tries to focus his eyes in any direction that isn't down. Everything's so fuzzy, though. Fuzzy, and hot, and-

\----- 

The deck is much softer beneath Kris's back than he'd have expected. Kind of squishy, really. Dry, too, despite all the blood, though his shirt is faintly damp with sweat. Perhaps he's fallen on something. But there's a weight pressing down on him from both sides, too, so perhaps something's fallen on him... 

It takes him a few minutes to shake off the fog in his mind before he realises that he's no longer up on the deck of the _Highwind_. He's lying on a bed - and he's not alone.

The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is an impossibility. Chanyeol, whole and healthy, grinning at him sleepily. It's too good to be true. Kris starts to reach for him, to check for himself that Chanyeol's okay. His arm never even makes it off the mattress. Baekhyun, tucked up against his other side, isn't giving him the space.

"How?" Kris rasps out, voice low in case this Chanyeol is an illusion, to be dispersed by truth.

"Yixing." Chanyeol's grin turns fond. "The last thing I remember was the spikes. When I came to, Yixing was using his new materia on me."

"But you were-"

"He wasn't," Baekhyun cuts in. "Only nearly. Which you'd have known if you hadn't passed out right next to him." 

Kris flushes hotly at the reminder. He hadn't been able to check - though if he had, he might not have been incensed enough to think of becoming a dragon. He considers a little embarrassment to be a small price to pay. "Excuse me for saving the day." It emerges as a sarcastic grumble.

"My hero," Baekhyun shoots back in the same tone. 

"My hero too," Chanyeol says, only he sounds like he means it. "You and Yixing. Are you feeling all right now? He said you were completely out of it when you came around on the deck, but didn't seem injured, so he didn't use anything on you."

Kris doesn't even recall waking up before, but thinks, on the whole, he'd rather not remember regaining consciousness next to Chanyeol's battered body. "I feel like I could sleep for a week but yeah, I'm okay."

"You fell asleep up on the deck," Baekhyun says. "Jongin had to move you here and then dispose of any corpses that were in too many pieces for us to easily throw overboard. I'm sure he feels like he could sleep for a month after all that."

"Jongin doesn't need any excuses to sleep for a month," Kris says; beside him, Baekhyun smirks in agreement. "How's everyone else?"

Chanyeol counts them off. "Lu Han's utterly drained-"

"Hiding out in Jongin's cabin so he doesn't have to see the sky," Baekhyun corrects.

"-and Jongin's also asleep-"

"No surprises there," Kris says.

"-Jongdae's looking for a good place to land so we can safely repair the broken railings-"

Oops, Kris thinks. 

"-Minseok, Zitao and Sehun are sleeping, Yixing went to check on the chocobos, and Kyungsoo's trying to make Joonmyun clean up some of the mess." 

The chocobos. _Ace_. Kris had forgotten all about them. A sharp jolt of guilt, feeling rather like one of Ace's headbutts to the chin, shoots through him at this. Yixing would come and tell him if anything had happened, surely? He must know by now if there were any casualties.

"That was nearly an hour ago," Baekhyun says. "You'd have heard already if your beloved son weren't still alive and kicking."

"How long have I been asleep?"

"Not nearly as long as you probably need," Chanyeol says. "But I'm not sure this bed's big enough for three of us to stay here all night."

They're in Kris's cabin; he can tell by the guitar case still visible in the corner. The bed's wide enough for three, but only if none of them move. He's so tired he's not sure moving's even an option right now. Baekhyun, when Kris glances sidelong at him, appears equally worn out. Although he's as mouthy as ever, his eyes are barely open. 

"It can't be night yet," Kris says. "I know it's been a long day, but not _that_ long."

"It isn't, but..." The cheeriness fades from Chanyeol's voice. "There's nothing more we can do today. Yixing's healed anyone who's injured, but he won't do anything about exhaustion and he can't repair the airship with materia."

"He refused when I asked for a pick-me-up," Baekhyun complains. "I didn't think being judgemental could be this tiring. I'm sure it never used to be." He yawns, his eyes closing the rest of the way, and shakes his head a little against the pillow before settling down again.

The sensation of his hair tickling Kris's cheek is mildly irritating, though nostalgic. "Don't mind me, just go right ahead and make yourself comfortable..."

"Oh, I am," Baekhyun says. "I intend to lie here and not think about anything for at least ten hours."

"Good luck with that," Chanyeol says wryly, and Kris wonders if they'll all still dream about their past lives now they have their memories back.

He hopes not. There's nothing left that he wants to see, and his head's already crammed full of more thoughts than he can hold. About his power, and his days of being a guardian of the Tree of Life. About where they're going, and what they'll do when they get there. And, of more immediate concern, about whether Chanyeol and Baekhyun being in his bed means that they're falling back into patterns established a lifetime ago. Shared backrubs after a hard day's training. Baekhyun clowning around by singing along deliberately off-key to Chanyeol's guitar while Kris provides percussion. Sprawling near the fire for warmth in winter, Kris's fingers carding idly through Chanyeol's hair, Baekhyun's head resting on Chanyeol's legs. 

Kris envies Jongin and Lu Han, just a little bit. They know what they are to each other - they've known for months, even if they've had to iron out some of the details. This life, last life, it doesn't matter. Though they've changed as people, the nature of their relationship is essentially the same.

Baekhyun's been in and out of Kris's life for months; Chanyeol's only just joined them. They've barely had time to find their footing with each other and now they have their memories back, which means...

Kris has no idea what that means. But he hopes they live long enough to find out.


End file.
